Catalysis
by kalabangsilver
Summary: Ruth and Harry try to balance work and their new relationship amidst the chaos of the Grid. Set post9 AU.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N – Technically, this is a sequel to my fic 'five letter word' but it can stand alone. All you have to know is that Ruth and Harry have had a chat on the roof of Thames House and decided to give themselves a second chance. Set post-9, AU, rated T (for now)._

_._

_Chapter 1 - History_

.

It was frigidly cold, when Ruth arrived back home. Her hands shook as they fumbled around in her handbag for her keys. Her skin was still half-numb from her walk back from the bus stop. Her shoulders were still tense from her day at work. It had been a long week, punctuated by three bomb threats, a missing foreign dignitary and an escaped right-wing terrorist. With disaster averted, Ruth had hoped to crawl back home and sleep but duty had called, one last time, in the form of a background check commissioned by the Home Secretary.

It had taken two hours to compile a report on the matter, by which time all non-essential personnel had drained off the Grid. Ruth had soldiered on alone, with only young Tariq Masood to assist her. Once done, she had dismissed the young technical officer and ventured into Harry's office alone, to hand their report over and beg leave of the Grid. He had grumblingly agreed, muttering something about payscales not being proportionate to hours put in, and there being precious few perks to being the most senior ranking officer.

The thought of her boss – now no longer _just_ her boss – made Ruth smile slightly. He had not been in the best of moods when she had left and still had to run that report over to Towers, before he retired for the night. Ruth could only hope that the Home Secretary would express his undying gratitude, for the report, when Harry delivered it. It would be highly awkward, she thought, if Towers were to be found strangled in his office, tomorrow morning. Ruth wasn't entirely sure she would feel comfortable with providing Harry an alibi. That said, there were some days she wanted to strangle William Towers as well.

Pushing politicians and their pointless paperwork from her mind, Ruth managed to find her keys, nestled in the deepest part of her coat pocket, and pulled them forth. Unlocking the front door of her apartment, she quietly let herself in, pulling off her scarf and coat and hanging them near the door.

The house was deathly silent. Ruth paused, after removing her outer layers, peering around it a little anxiously. The locks had all been in place and the alarm system approved by Tariq himself, but she had grown wary of everything, over the past couple of years. And since Beth had moved out, several months ago, she had found this place somewhat too large and too empty to feel completely at home. It was a three bedroom apartment, with one rattling around in it. Ruth didn't even own much of the furniture. Everything she would take with her, when she left, could fit inside three suitcases.

Part of her missed Beth Bailey – and all her mess and clutter. It was quite dispiriting, coming back to an empty house. Still, it made the place easier to navigate in the dark. She began to pick her way carefully towards the kitchen, where a soft noise at the door had announced Fidget's presence.

At fourteen years old, the cat was old and tired but, unlike his owner, had lost none of his_ joie de vivre_. As Ruth opened the kitchen door and flicked on the light, he tottered happily over and wound himself around her legs, proudly offering her the tail of some unfortunate rodent he had caught in the garden. Ruth picked it up between two fingertips and deposited it in the bin, where it belonged. The cat looked nonplussed, but soon forgave her when she turned her attentions to adding food to his bowl.

Ruth straightened and leant back against the counter top, watching him eat. Fidget was an old friend but, as nice as it was to watch him nosing around in his food bowl, she couldn't help but still feel a little lonely. Apart from the cat's gentle crunching, the house remained as quiet as when she had entered it. There was no Beth, to call out a greeting, no team members, jesting like family as they did during slow days on the Grid... no Harry to-... Ruth cleared her throat. No Harry.

Giving a slight sigh, she turned to the fridge and began to search through her meagre choices for sustenance. It was late, but she should really eat something before retiring for the night. She had to work in the morning, after all, and no doubt she would be up far too early to feel like eating then. There was half a plate of lasagne on the bottom shelf, leftover from dinner the day before, which looked plausible, so she chucked it into the microwave and left it to heat up. Leftovers would do. She wasn't terribly hungry. She was tired more than anything – tired and mildly frustrated.

Her thoughts fell back to Harry.

It had been almost a week, she thought, toying with the sleeves of her jumper; a week since their discussion on the Thames House rooftop, since they had made the decision to try and make something good from their broken relationship. Ruth could not have imagined a worse week for a fledgling couple to take their first steps. Throughout the string of national (and political) emergencies, they had barely had time to talk to one another, let alone anything else. They had drank coffee together, on New Years day, but it was only on the Grid, so Ruth supposed that didn't really count as a date. They had kissed twice.

The first time, she had been meeting him and the rest of the team, to give them a file. The others had left after the meeting and Harry had pulled her to one side and kissed her, before they had headed back to the Grid. It had been a light kiss, gentle and fleeting. Still, it made her blush slightly to remember it. It made her blush harder, to remember the second kiss.

The microwave pinged and Ruth reached inside of it, checking on the lasagne. Feeling that it was still half-cold, she shoved it back inside and set it for another turn, her thoughts still revolving around Harry.

The second time they had kissed had been late at night. They had been walking down the corridor outside his office, with Calum Reid and Dimitri sleeping next door, on the camp beds set out in the briefing room. Tariq had been slaving away on some program or another, in his lair. Erin Watts had been dispatched over to meet a contact at Six, while everyone else on the Grid had been sent home, to grab a few hours of rest. The mood in the air had been one of adrenaline and fear. It had been one of those awful few hours, during an operation, where all they could do was wait. There had been no new leads, no movements on either side of the playing field. Ruth had been explaining some cross-referencing process to Harry. They had been walking down the corridor, behind his office, and he had stopped in his tracks – so she had stopped – then he had turned and pressed his lips against hers.

She could still remember the taste of him, if she cared to. She could remember the feel of his chest brushing hers, too, though all cognisant thought abandoned her at the time. She had let herself be steered back against the wall, felt it hard against her shoulder blades, as Harry's was soft against her front. The kiss had not been chaste and not been fleeting. It had been slow and deep and, even after he had pulled back from her, it had taken a good ten seconds or so before she had realised where they were, and what they should not be doing, and nudged him away.

"Harry," she had whispered his name in reproach.

"They can't see. We're in a blind spot," he had told her, with burning eyes.

"Oh," Ruth had murmured back, going red.

Somehow, she couldn't find it in herself to be surprised that be had a CCTV blind spot, just outside his office. He was Harry Pearce, after all. It had probably come in useful more than once, in his time as Section Head. Probably never for this, though, thought Ruth, biting her lip.

They had stood still, watching one another, for another few seconds, and then Ruth's nerves had got the better of them.

"Someone could come by," she had whispered, edging gently away before, on impulse, nipping back in to give him another brief kiss. "Sorry," she whispered as they parted and stepped off, ahead of him, down the blue-lit corridor.

"Don't be." Harry had followed her, a few paces behind. When she glanced back, he was smiling. "I was having a terrible day," he murmured, too quiet for anyone else to hear. "You just made it better."

They had parted and gone their separate ways, after that, and it had taken Ruth's heart rate a full ten minutes to slow to normal.

Her cheeks remained red for nearly fifteen.

Though Ruth was glad that the Grid had been empty of their colleagues, when Harry had pinned her against the corridor wall – and even gladder that they had been in a CCTV blind spot – she could not quite bring herself to feel sorry for what they had done. Harry had felt so good against her. He had made her feel good, too. And it wasn't wrong, she reminded herself, not anymore.

Ruth sighed as a strange feeling fluttered up from her stomach, a mix of relief and longing and maybe a little lust. It was quarter past two in the morning, far too late for her to call him, but she was already starting to regret her request to move slowly with their new relationship. She should have invited him back here, she thought, cursing herself for being prudish. There had been a chance, earlier that night, when he had told her to go home and get some rest. They been talking about the clean-up operation and the report he needed to deliver to the Home Secretary. She could have asked him then, Ruth thought, asked him to come by her place after he had handed over his report – asked him back to share her bed. He would have accepted, she knew he would have. They were tired, not dead, after all.

Giving a sigh, she watched the microwave plate turn slowly. The more pragmatic part of her mind countered that she would have no idea what to do with him, once she had him here. The dreams she had dreamt of Harry, over the years, had not even nearly prepared her for having his hands play over her neck, her back, and her sides. Every time they touched, it had felt like she was burning, like it was nowhere near enough. At the same time, it also felt very close to being too much.

Some part of Ruth was glad that they had had events to hold them apart, this past week. Years of want and longing had inspired powerful lust and she did not want that to be their first experience of each other, something quick and cheap and desperate. They weren't that. On the other hand, she had grown quite used to the idea of having Harry in a way she had not had him in the past. Over the last week, they had found moments just to stand and talk. More often than not, they talked about work, but it had been nice – personal rather than professional. They found excuses to brush against one another and hold each others' gaze, they talked softly and laughed at each other's jokes, and, for the first time, Ruth did not feel guilty.

It was okay, she had realised with a rush of joy, to touch him, now. It was okay that he was watching her with hungry eyes. They had talked about what they wanted on that roof and agreed that they were going to try and make this work. Finally feeling it was okay, for them to act like a couple, also made Ruth reconsider just how slow she wanted to take this. Seven years had been a long time of wanting him. And it had been nearly three since she had been with a man. She wanted this almost as much as Harry's eyes said he did.

The microwave pinged, interrupting Ruth's increasingly heated thoughts. Emptying out the lasagne onto a plate, she stood back and frowned at it for a second, then poked it with the end of her fork. It bounced back from her touch, rubbery.

"Lovely," she murmured, investigating the way the cheese had melted off the top and pooled greasily around the sides. Perhaps she would just have toast, instead...

Fidget purred and rubbed against her ankle. Ruth prodded the lasagne's rubbery surface one last time and then shoved it to one side. Yes, toast would do. She was not that hungry anyway. Memories, of past, sweet entanglements with Harry, had left her feeling frustrated and on-edge. She did not want food. She wanted him. It was maddening.

"I know," she told Fidget, bending down to scratch behind his ear. "I'm being an idiot. I said we should take this slow, so we should take this slow... but it's _Harry_." She appraised the cat, wondering if he would remember Harry, who had fostered him during the few years Ruth had spent 'dead' in Cyprus. "You remember Harry. My boss. Your old housemate. We've liked him for quite a while..." she told the cat.

Fidget purred in reply but was then promptly distracted by the movement of a speck of dust, and padded away. Fickle creature, thought Ruth, with a sigh. Without him there, however, she felt even lonelier. Deciding to distract herself by filling her belly, she tossed the lasagne into the bin and proceeded to dig through her cupboards, eventually coming upon a slightly stale scone. With butter and jam applied, it wasn't half bad. Ruth made some tea and went to sit at the table, prising off her boots as she went.

Her feet and her back were aching from the past two days, spent rushing between the Grid, archives and various safehouses. It had been a very long week. She wondered whether Harry had presented her report to the Home Secretary, yet. Had he returned to the Grid afterwards, or gone home? As if they did not belong to her, Ruth's eyes slid back over to where her phone lay on the counter and she debated with herself over whether Harry would still be awake. No normal person would be, this early on a Sunday morning, but Harry was no more normal than she was. So, perhaps...

She broke the last few bits of the scone into pieces and toyed with them, watching the phone resolutely, now. It wouldn't do much harm to send him a message, surely. If he was asleep then he could check it in the morning. If not, then she might get an answer right away. What the hell she wanted say, she was not sure, but she wanted one last point of contact, before the evening was over. (Or 'morning', she should really say morning now, it was nearly three, after all). God, she would be getting up in just four hours.

Her mind was almost made up to message him when her mobile chirped happily and vibrated against the table.

Ruth gave a little jump. On the other side of the room, Fidget turned in a somewhat confused circle, searching for the source of the noise. The poor cat was half-deaf, but sudden, loud noises still unsettled him. This noise unsettled Ruth as well, and simultaneously filled her with joy. Discarding the last few bits of scone, she rose again and shuffled over to the phone in stocking feet, turning it over and unlocking it deftly. Her heart leapt a little more. It was Harry's number. Harry's message.

Her stomach twisted as she opened it.

'_Sorry for disturbing you so late. Was just wondering if you fancied coffee, before the Wood meeting, with the Home Sec tomorrow? I can pick you up.'_

Coffee, of course Harry would ask her for coffee. It was less emotionally loaded than dinner and more intimate than lunch, which could so easily be work-related. Ruth cleared her throat, feeling it tighter than usual, drier too. Her skin was tingling slightly, with a mixture of surprise and delight. The thought of her and Harry doing something normal like going for coffee felt surreal, after so many years. What would they talk about, if he ruled out work as a topic?

Don't be stupid, she reminded herself, they had had plenty to talk about over dinner. In fact, he had surprised her with how easy dinner was. They had worked as well together there as they did on the Grid. It was the bit afterwards that was difficult, the returning to work and facing the talk. But Ruth was prepared for that, now. She was older, wiser, (well, sort of) and, despite her nerves, there was no question over whether she _wanted_ to go.

She took a steadying breath.

'_Sounds good,_' she typed in. '_You can pick me up around seven, if it suits you.' _Her fingers hovered over the send button for a moment, and then moved back to the text box and added, '_why on earth are you still awake?' _signing her initial at the end. It felt too soon for a kiss, but she wanted to end it on a personal note and it seemed fitting.

Ruth had never had much time for texting, in the past, but it was something the younger members of the team seemed to prefer to short phone calls. So, she had grown used to it. Outside of work, nobody but Calum really sent her messages. He was the friendliest of the new team. Every few days, he would send her a joke – or a dirty limerick, if he was feeling particularly mischievous. Malcolm occasionally checked up on her, too, especially if he had heard something terrible on the news. But he was more like to call than text.

Harry had only really communicated by phone calls, before. Ruth was just wondering whether the younger team was having an effect on him too, when the phone began to vibrate in her hand and she dropped it in a momentary spate of panic. It bounced off the table and clattered to the floor, tipping over twice before settling at her feet. Ruth scooped it quickly back up. Thankfully, the glass front of the screen had not cracked from the fall and she could still read the caller ID.

Harry's name printed across the top, next to the word 'calling'.

Harry.

Ruth swore quietly to herself. Then, pulling on as much composure as she could manage, she unlocked the phone and answered, trying to keep the breathless edge from her tone. He really needn't know how terribly out of practice she was at this.

"Hi,"

As soon as the word left her lips, she cursed inwardly. Why 'hi'? What a stupid way to start things. She never said 'hi', she always said 'hello'. Who was this woman she had turned into, with all of these nerves and insecurities?

Harry's voice on the other end of the line, however, drove her self-deprecating thoughts away with one word. "Hi," he echoed her greeting, perhaps to make her feel more comfortable. Ruth felt a swelling gratitude towards him and a wave of another emotion, a lot more familiar. After a moment of silence, Harry continued. "Why aren't you asleep?"

He sound tired. Ruth could hear the hint of a yawn in his voice and wondered whether he had left the office, yet. Surely he had.

"Just got back and I was hungry. Thought I'd eat something so I didn't fall over," she explained.

It was strange, having a friendly conversation with Harry at half two in the morning, strange but not unpleasant. Late night tete-a-tetes had long been banned and Ruth did not doubt, now, why Harry had done so. There was an undertone, to his innocent questioning. It was late, they should both have been asleep. Both were tired and vulnerable, yet they chose to seek each other out. The undertone, to their situation, was one of mutual need. Ruth's heart was pounding against her chest.

"You said you were going home," she admonished her boss, softly.

"I am home. This is a non work-related call." He sounded pleased, at being able to say that without repercussion.

Ruth felt her heart beat a little faster. There was a little bit of a silence, as they sized each other up. Non work-related left this conversation open to a lot of things, things they had not yet had the chance to pursue, what with the intensity of the week that had just passed. Ruth was not sure what to say. Thankfully, Harry soon took the decision out of her hands and spoke up first.

"Messaging you was a passive-aggressive way of seeing if you were awake," he admitted, softly. "I didn't want to disturb you, but I wanted to make sure you made it home okay."

And check that you were allowed to call me? Ruth bit at the inside of her lip. That was part of the reason she had wanted to call him. What had happened between them, up on that rooftop last week, still did not seem real and neither did anything which had occurred between them since. The gentle touching, the kisses, the newfound ability to talk to one another – it all seemed like an obscenely pleasant dream. Ruth half expected to wake up at any minute. The pain of biting at the inside of her lip, however, did not wake her and the table felt solid under her fingertips. Yes, she was definitely awake.

"You should be asleep," she murmured, because she knew she needed to say something, even if it wasn't something important. As happy as she would be, to sit and listen to him talk all night, Ruth decided she should try and not sound like a love-struck fool. "Did you manage to get the report to Towers?" she asked, smothering a yawn.

"Yes," Harry replied, sounding almost as exhausted as she felt. "The bastard had the audacity to scold me, for keeping him up so late."

Ruth gave a soft noise of disbelief, but said no more.

After a moment, Harry continued.

"I just got back ten minutes ago. Calum and Dimitri are holding the Grid, for now, with some junior analysts in tow. They'll call me if anything sinister comes up but, knock on wood, everything has worked out the way we planned. The detonator and supplies are in custody and the remaining perpetrators..." Harry paused to yawn and never quite finished his sentence.

Ruth let it slide.

"All is well, then?"

"All is well."

Ruth knew how terrible the world could be – she had had plenty of experience of it, after all. Still, when Harry said all was well, she could not help but feel a little safer. Perhaps it was his voice, or just the fact that he was Harry Pearce. She forgot sometimes, because she had known him for so long, but Harry Pearce was considered a formidable figure in their world. His name demanded a lot of respect and a healthy dose of fear, amongst his colleagues. Yet here he was, voice almost purring down the phone line, for her. Ruth's lips curled into a happy little smile, at the thought.

About ten seconds passed in silence, punctuated by the sound of their soft breathing.

"Ruth?" Harry eventually asked.

"Yes?"

"Do you want me to go, so that you can sleep?"

"No," she answered, a little too quickly. Flushing pink, she forced herself to slow down and explain. "No, Harry, don't go. I'm glad you called, I'm just-,"

"-Tired." Strangely, Ruth could tell that he was smiling, when he said it. It gave a distinctive tension to his voice, an edge that she could never tire of hearing. "I know," Harry continued, "I could sleep for a month."

"We've been through worse," she told him, trying to brush it off. "I've been more tired."

"Baghdad?" Harry asked, voice soft as silk.

"Yes," Ruth agreed, her stomach twisting slightly within her. "Baghdad was bad."

In danger, sleep deprived, hot as hell... and close enough to Harry that every day had been a test of willpower. Ruth was still surprised they had made it through Baghdad without pinning each other against their cheap hotel wall. It had been a close thing, once or twice. One particular moment stuck in her mind, an almost-clinch in the doorway of her hotel room. He had touched her neck, brushing away a stray lock of hair, or a fly – she could no longer remember why he touched her, just that he did – and they had gravitated towards each other, sharing an almost-kiss.

Harry's phone had rung then, however, and Ruth had pulled sharply away. They had plunged themselves back into work and she had managed to stay a little further away from him after that. Three days, two nights, no sleep. They had fallen asleep against one another on the plane journey home and, when they had woken in London, they had both refused to talk about it. Baghdad was a long time ago, now, though.

"I've had worse than Baghdad," Ruth sighed.

"The_ 'Incident'_ with the Russians, in 2007?" Harry asked.

"Surprisingly not my worst few days on the Grid," Ruth told him. "Good choice, though. That was a ghastly weekend."

In the silence, Ruth could almost feel him frown, his natural curiosity piqued. The thought of it raised a smile, to her lips. Her companion was a spook, through and through; Harry Pearce, asker of questions, solver of problems. He saw the world as a puzzle and it all had to be questioned to death before he could let it lie. Ruth secretly loved it about him but hoped that they would become close enough, soon, to tell him off for it. His ego could do with a good nudge back down to earth, now and again, and it was just the sort of domesticity that she was craving.

After half a minute, or so, her spook relented and asked her the question outright.

"Okay, then," he sighed. "When were you most tired, on the Grid?"

Ruth smiled. "That bloody lockdown drill, last year."

It had been one of the longest nights of her life. She had barely managed to keep her eyes open, under the intensity of their faked national emergency. Lucas had caught her drifting off more than once and Tariq had had to save her ass when she missed a cross-check on one of the personnel files she was vetting.

Harry hummed, softly.

"Yes, I remember that." He sounded fondly reminiscent. "You were not best pleased."

"I was seething," Ruth stated.

"So I remember." He yawned again and then added, "It was only one night, though. Surely you've been more tired?"

"It was one night for you," Ruth accused, gently. "You had just rolled out of bed. I had pulled a double shift, just before."

"Well, it was hardly my fault that you were flouting ethical employment regulations."

Ruth decided to hold back the fact that she had been working back-to-back weekend shifts and nights in order to avoid seeing him. At the time, it was the only way she felt capable of working but it seemed a little juvenile, now. It also seemed like it might put a dampener on the conversation and she was enjoying him so much. The informality of it all, the soft way he said her name and laughed, it warmed her from the inside out. It warmed her elsewhere, too, but Ruth had resolved not to concentrate on that warming, on that ache. They were supposed to be taking this slowly – no matter how much she didn't want to.

She let herself yawn loudly, to distract herself from the growing need to ask him to come over. The first yawn seemed to catch on another and she gave herself a little shake to finish it off. It was one of those heavy yawns, which left your ears popped and your head about ready for slumber. Giving a little sigh, she wandered through to the living room, sitting herself down on the couch.

Harry asked, again, if he should leave her be. Again, Ruth replied to the negative.

"I'm exhausted, but I don't think I could sleep," she sighed, arranging herself against the couch's many pillows. "My mind is too full."

"A common occurrence, for an analyst, I'm sure."

She smiled. "Is it not for a Section Head?"

"Oh, I think you'd be surprised by how gloriously empty my head is, at the end of a day."

Ruth chuckled, instead of refuting his claim, though she suspected it was far from the truth. Her companion had more skeletons, ghosts and regrets than the rest of their team put together. She hoped that, in time, she could lighten them a bit. There were a hundred things he could never tell her, but there were also a few he could. And she could remove the guilt he felt over her, at least. Giving another yawn, she nestled further into the couch, body sinking into a happy state of torpor.

"But I'm not keeping you from your empty headed sleep, am I?" she asked, softly. "I wouldn't like to impose."

"Don't be ridiculous. You're not imposing. I called you," Harry pointed out, "remember?"

A not unpleasant blush crept up Ruth's neck, fanning out across her chest and cheeks. "Yes," she told him softly. "I know."

There was a comfortable silence for a little. Ruth listened to the soft sound of Harry breathing, wondering if it was at all feasible to ask him to stay on the line. If she closed her eyes, now, she knew his breaths would lull her off to sleep. In the end, however, she decided not to ask. It did sound a little creepy and she wasn't nearly brave enough, besides.

"What time does the Home Sec need us, tomorrow?"" she yawned instead.

"Half nine. I managed to get us a lie-in."

"Do I need to prepare anything else?" Ruth asked, to distract herself from her sordid imaginations of what they could have done with a lie-in.

Harry made a noise that she interpreted as negative. "No, nothing else. Your report, on Wood's current security plans, was more than satisfactory and we can work out a proper threat assessment once we have all the details." Harry yawned. "I'd like you to pay attention to Neilson, tomorrow. I want a second opinion on what he is up to. I haven't been able to find any hint of why the SIS want him in on this. He's had no previous dealings with China – not that I know about, anyway. I can only assume that whatever Wood was doing out there was rather important and the idea of its discovery has ruffled feathers in higher management. Neilson is the dog they've sent in."

Neilson. Each time he said his SIS counterpart's name, Ruth detected an undertone of resentment, lending weight to the rumour that their relationship was not a particularly harmonious one.

"Six are showing far too much interest in our involvement," Ruth's boss continued, after a pause. "If Towers knows why, he's not telling me."

"A little counterproductive," Ruth murmured, knowing exactly what Harry needed from her, right now; confirmation.

"But keeping me updated would be far too sensible."

"Of course," she agreed, quietly.

"I'm only his bloody Head of Counterterrorism, after all."

Another smile drew across Ruth's lips. There was that ego again. Would he like her to stroke it a little? She could stroke...

"He probably thinks you'll figure it out by yourself," she told him, voice a little softer than usual. "You usually do."

"Perhaps I should just leave them to it," Harry suggested, "see what happens?"

The smile stretched a little across Ruth's face. However much her boss complained, she knew he would never just 'leave them to it'. Harry would be in there, tomorrow morning, digging and prodding and pushing his weight around, to find out what was happening. It was his job and he was very good at his job.

On the other end of the line, he yawned again.

"You should be in bed," Ruth murmured, fondly.

There was a few seconds gap in the conversation and then Harry spoke up again, somewhat cautiously.

"I am in bed."

"Oh."

The light-hearted nature of the conversation vanished, in the space of a second, replaced with sudden tension.

Ruth's stomach squeezed uncomfortably, inside of her. Harry was in bed and he was calling her. There was no intentional expectation in his words, yet the implication was heavy in the air – for both of them. This was something they had never done before. It was brand new territory and somewhat more intimate than Ruth was used to. He was calling her from his bed, possibly more undressed than she had ever seen him.

No, scratch that last thought, thought Ruth, giving her head another little shake. She wasn't ready for the warmth that would roll through her, from it.

"Too much?" Harry asked her, nervously, after she had not spoken for some time.

"No," Ruth forced herself to reply.

It was not a lie, just an exaggeration. It was not too much – she wanted more, after all – but it was also more than she had been expecting. Never in her life had she wanted anything so much as she wanted Harry, now, but old habits were hard to kill. She had spent so long running away that it was hard to turn towards him. It was hard to shake her nerves, over having a conversation with Harry in bed. Perhaps it was simply because she had not _been_ in his bed yet. Ruth had never been shy with previous lovers but, then again, she hadn't spent seven years convincing herself that any relationship with them was inappropriate.

This thing with Harry was going to be different, Ruth reminded herself gently, but that did not mean it was wrong. She was just going to have to stop trying to compare, stop trying to act as she would with a man she had just met, just fallen in love with.

Letting out a heavy sigh, she relaxed into the couch, closing her eyes and leaning the phone against her cheek. This was Harry. This was 'them', something she had wanted for seven years. She knew what 'them' entailed, of course. They were riddled with holes. Their foundations were cracked and broken. They were two people, made of secrets and lies, trying to come together to from something whole and good. That was never going to be easy, Ruth told herself. There were trust issues and history issues and a host of other issues they had yet to confront, or even discover. She just had to accept that they were starting at a different level to all her previous relationships.

Beneath her nerves, Ruth knew she did not really mind that Harry was calling her from his bed. It implied trust and want, and she was glad he felt that for her – especially the last part. Once over the initial surprise, she realised it was okay for her to admit that, now. They were together. They had decided to try and make this work. It was a good thing that they let each other know what they wanted. They both already knew how each other felt, besides, and it wasn't like they were rushing into this. They had had seven years to get to know each other and, though they had only had a week to come around to the idea of being a couple, Ruth knew that she was more than ready to move a little faster. She had slept with George after three dates, after all. Her experience with Harry was more than equivalent.

"I'm looking forwards to coffee," she told him, truthfully, after she had managed to calm her voice. "And I'm glad you called."

Harry continued to hold his silence.

Ruth spoke up again. "It wasn't too much, Harry, I'm just tired and this is all so new."

"If it ever is, you have to say," he told her, softly. It wasn't often that Ruth heard the great Harry Pearce unsure but unsure he certainly was, right now. The realisation was oddly touching. "I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable."

"You don't," she assured him, gently. Not in any way she didn't enjoy, anyways. "Honestly, Harry, I'm glad you called. It was nice to hear your voice."

And, with that, the ice was broken. An admission of need was all it took, Ruth realised, and resolved to express her need for him more often. Curling deeper into the soft of the couch, she nestled the phone into the crook of her neck and they talked on, about nothing in particular, until Harry's half-smothered yawns became more frequent. Then, Ruth decided it was time she forced him off the line.

"I should go, Harry," she told him softly. "If we don't get to sleep, soon, there'll be no point coming in tomorrow at all."

"Normally, I would give you the day off," her boss began, apologetically, "but..."

"...The meeting, I know." Ruth nodded to herself.

Personally, she was glad that she was needed at their meeting with the Home Secretary, tomorrow – it prevented Harry from letting personal feelings get in the way and offering her the day off. He would have asked it in a professional manner, of course, but Ruth still felt a bit uneasy about the situation. She rather doubted he would grant any of their other colleagues the same leniency. She couldn't imagine Calum or Dimitri getting the day off because he was tired and had stayed up chatting to a prospective lover on the phone.

"If I had anyone else who could handle the workload, I would give you the time." Harry assured her, bringing a small smile back to her lips. "You've already been on the Grid through both Christmas and New Years', after all."

"I know," she repeated again, softly. "I don't mind, Harry."

"There is nobody else on my staff who can translate Wu Chinese, Mandarin and multi-task so efficiently."

Ruth felt her cheeks redden slightly. "Well, that has more to do with your lax hiring strategy than anything else," she muttered, clearing her throat to hide her pleasure at the compliment. She was a spaniel, she thought, just like she had once overheard Juliet say. She would crawl on her belly if it meant Harry would give her a pat the head. It was a little pathetic, Ruth knew, but she had never been able to help herself. "We run three analysts short of the other sections, you know," she told him.

"If I hired more of you, I'd have to pay you all less," he teased her back.

A soft noise of disbelief escaped her. "If you paid us less it would be indentured servitude!"

He laughed out loud at that, the sound low and rich and melodic.

Ruth pushed her head a little further into her pillows, smiling to herself. The awkward tension in the air had faded away again, leaving only warmth. A few seconds passed in comfortable, sleepy silence, their combined, soft breaths the only sound down the line. Then, Harry sighed and spoke again.

"I can pick you up tomorrow, then?"

"Around seven?" Ruth asked.

"Half past. We'll be slightly late in, but I'm sure your boss won't mind and I need the sleep."

Her smile stretched, her skin warm, her muscles relaxed against the softness of the couch. And, above all the comfort of her body, her mind was singing with pleasure. Harry was on the line, Harry was talking to her softly, joking with her gently, loving her quite openly. It felt strange, incredibly strange, but also wonderful.

"I'll sell him some lie about missing my bus," she told him, hiding her smile against one of the couch's many pillows.

Harry sighed, softly – happily, Ruth was almost sure. "Goodnight, Ruth," he murmured to her, down the line. "Sleep well."

"You too."

The urge to ask him to come to her, or to jump in her car and drive to him, was almost overpowering again. Forcing herself past it, Ruth lowered the phone from her ear and pressed 'end call'. The line blinked then went dead. Her heart sank a little, into her stomach, but she stopped short of feeling truly saddened. She would see him in about five hours, after all. They were getting coffee – like two normal people, on a normal date. If she managed not to act like a complete idiot, then coffee could lead to something more. It was not going to be easy, but Ruth knew that. She and Harry had enough baggage to scare any sane person senseless. Still, they wanted the same thing, now, and there was love there, love which had survived all the pain and the years. She wanted to fight for it. He did too.

Deciding that her body was too tired to walk upstairs, she turned herself on the couch, shifting around until she was comfortable. Then, reaching over the side, she flicked the lamp off and the room was plunged into darkness. Her phone screen remained lit for a moment, as she set an alarm and checked her inbox one last time. Then, giving an enormous yawn, she turned that off too, placing it on the side table. Almost as soon as she closed her eyes, the exhaustion of the day hit her and her body sunk deep into slumber. Her heart beat slowed, her breathing evening out. Within minutes, she was fast asleep.

Her dreams, for once, were pleasant.

.

_Note; Many thanks to wannabe2 and natesdate, who were kind enough to help me with spooks trivia and ideas on where I should take this. Your input was greatly appreciated. =)_


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N – Thank you all for the kind reviews. Hope this next instalment is to your liking. =)_

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_Chapter 2 – More_

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Morning came too soon. It seemed, to Harry, that he had only just sunk into slumber when the sound of his alarm jerked him harshly back to reality. It was a horrible sound, a bit like a foghorn, but it was the only pre-loaded ring which could stir him from his deepest sleeps. So, he woke to it every morning.

It was particularly disconcerting this morning, after such a deep sleep. Groping blindly towards his bedside table, Harry tried to find the damned thing, to silence it. After a few seconds, his fingers closed around the cold metal casing and he turned it over in his hand. One swipe of a thumb shut the alarm down and silence reigned beautifully, once more, through the bedroom.

Thank god.

Heaving a half-sigh, half-moan, Harry rolled back over onto his back, staring listlessly up at the ceiling. One morning, that alarm would be the death of him. He could feel his heart thrilling against his ribs for its efforts. Surely, such a wake-up was not healthy, he thought. After all, he was not a young man anymore. Unfortunately, he was not a man who had the luxury of waking gently either. When Harry Pearce's phone rang, he had to wake up. If someone called him at two in the morning, he had to go in. People depended on him.

Looking sideways, he took in the half-darkness of the bedroom around him, morning light creeping in through his drawn blinds. The clock read half six. It was far too early to be awake, especially on a Sunday, but he hardly had a choice. He had a meeting with the Home Secretary on a matter which could not be postponed; a government minister and an assassination attempt. It was something he would really rather leave to someone else, but duty called. While civilians all around the country spent their Sunday with family, eating roast dinners and wasting hours on bad television, he would spend the day darting between the Home Office and Thames House – placating politicians. What a life, he thought, with a wry smile.

Whatever he thought of it, however, it was the life he had chosen and he had to get out of bed, to live it.

With a sigh, he rolled over on one side, trying to shake the remnants of sleep from his mind as he looked across his empty, king-sized bed. The bed was a bit of an extravagance for a single person, he knew, but comfort had always been one of Harry's vices. Big beds, good whiskey and younger women; his vices could be combined quite nicely, thought Harry, sliding one hand across his sheets to the cold space on the other side. Cold space. Empty space.

Harry had slept alone for so long that he hardly missed the company, when he dropped into bed at the end of the day. The next morning was another matter. Whatever problems he and Jane had faced, in the latter years of their marriage, they had both appreciated having someone to wake up next to. Harry was unabashedly a morning person. He slept deep, woke fast and ready for almost anything – literally, almost anything. Age had not been kind, in regards to losing muscle and gaining fat, but most mornings Harry would still wake hard as his twenty-year-old self. It was one of his few redeeming qualities, his wife had once told him. That and his eyes.

Rubbing said eyes, he shifted uncomfortably under the sheets, trying to remember the last time he had had anything which constituted sexual contact with another human being. It had to be upwards of two years, now. Younger-Harry would have been disgusted. Well, bugger younger-Harry, older-Harry thought, giving one last sigh and forcing himself to roll out of bed. Younger-Harry did not have to run Section D. Younger-Harry did not wake at half-six to a lonely bed. Younger-Harry was a lucky bastard.

Standing, he stumbled across the hardwood floor, toes curling slightly at its cold touch. Morning person or not, he thought he might sell out state secrets all over again, just to crawl back into bed today. The room was still half-dark and pleasantly warm. If he had not been meeting Ruth, in an hour's time, Harry thought he might have been sorely tempted to crawl back between his sheets. It would solve all his problems if Ruth were here between his sheets, he thought, with a smile. He wished she were. God, there were not enough words in the English language to describe how much he wished she were.

It would be a while before he could express such a sentiment aloud to Ruth, however. Despite their kisses on the roof, last week, she had still been nervous as he had walked her back to the Grid. She had been nervous on the phone last night, too, shying away when he had mentioned that he was in bed. It was understandable, Harry supposed, as he wandered through to the bathroom. They had spent so long as colleagues, knowing each other within well defined boundaries. She had spent seven years pushing him away. This was never going to be easy. Still, he selfishly hoped that they might get to consummate their relationship sometime before the next New Year. If not, he might lose whatever tenuous grip he still had on his sanity.

"You're killing me slowly, Ruth," he murmured softly.

His voice echoed, unanswered, off the white tiled walls.

Turning on the shower, Harry stood yawning beside it while the water warmed. His phone buzzed in the next room, but it was just the sound of another email dropping into his inbox and Harry did not quite have the heart to go back through and check it. It would keep, at least until he had woken himself up properly anyways. Tugging pyjamas free, he kicked them to the other side of the room and stepped around the glass front of the shower, into the stream of lukewarm water. It was probably another of his less redeeming qualities, he mused, as he turned his face up to feel the spray of it, but he never showered in water that was any hotter than tepid. An old habit, he assumed, borne from long years living in crummy apartments, without properly functioning boilers. Even though his current boiler worked, Harry had never really come around to the idea of hot showers. It didn't seem right.

He finished washing and stood for a while longer, wondering how coffee with Ruth was going to pan out and wondering where she was, at that exact moment; having several impure thoughts about her, involving a shower; having a brief stroke of himself while thinking aforementioned impure thoughts and then feeling a bit guilty for it (though not nearly guilty enough to stop); then he reached up and flicked the water off. Stepping out, he slicked the water off his face, grabbed hold of a towel and went about the business of getting dried and dressed.

By the time he made it downstairs, Harry was running a little late, despite having woken in what he had thought would be plenty of time. This was probably due to spending an inordinate amount of time choosing what tie to wear, changing his mind twice, and eventually settling on no tie at all. Slipping phone, wallet, keys and ID into his pocket, he slipped out the front door, setting the alarm system behind him.

Harry had given his driver the day off. It was hell driving through London, even on a Sunday, but it meant that he and Ruth could talk without being overheard. He knew that she would appreciate that. Besides, there was something nice about driving her around himself. It was probably one of those possessive male things that he should keep to himself, he thought with a smile.

Unlocking the sedan, he climbed in, feeling a little sorry that he had not driven it in a while. It was a shame to have a nice car and leave it sitting in the drive. As he started the engine and pulled it out into the street, Harry resolved to drive in more often. As he pulled out of his quiet residential district, however, he promptly changed his mind. It may have been seven o' clock on a Sunday morning, but London woke as early as Harry did. Within minutes, he was deep in traffic.

"It's a bloody Sunday," he muttered, fighting his way through packed lanes of traffic, towards his turning. "Where are you all going?" Quite irrationally, it bothered him that the people he spent his life protecting, from bombs and terrorism, wouldn't just stay in their houses on the weekend and enjoy the peace he had given them. It was a stupid thought, but he couldn't help it. "Idiot," he spat at the owner of an Audi, who was trying to push into the lane ahead of him, and drove on.

It took no more than five minutes to drive to Ruth's flat.

Harry had never mentioned it to his analyst, but the safehouse he had offered her when she had returned from Cyprus was situated less than half a mile from his house. He deluded himself into thinking that he had never mentioned it because the subject had never really come up – that she had never asked him and he had never offered. The truth, however, was that Harry knew that their proximity would make Ruth feel uncomfortable. It had been a possessive move, on his part, and not completely selfless. No matter how many times he told himself it was so that he was just around the corner, should anything happen, he knew that it was a different sort of proximity he craved.

Harry sighed, thumbing the leather stitching of the steering wheel. It was creepy, no matter what way he looked at it. He was certainly not looking forwards to the moment she found out. For the sake of their new relationship, he hoped that the moment would not come for another few weeks. Let him have time to build up some credit, at least, before he dashed all hopes of a future together.

Turning into her street, Harry drove up and alongside the town house, parking neatly on front of the drive. His stomach gave an uncharacteristic twist as the engine turned off. He had not come here since dropping off Beth Bailey, and that had been on a purely professional matter.

This thing between him and Ruth was so new that, at first, he wasn't quite sure whether or not to go to the door or call her from the car. Eventually, however, he decided that he would look like a bit of a coward if he didn't do the former and forced himself to step out and he make his way to her door. By the time he raised his hand to knock, his heart was beating at almost twice its usual pace. Resting his knuckles against the wood, for a moment, he took a steadying breath. Come on, Harry, he told himself, pull yourself together. You thrive on confrontation, just knock. Just do it.

He did manage it, eventually. Giving the door a sharp triple rap, he stepped back, sliding his hands into his pockets as he gazed around at the house's tiny front garden. It was a sad affair to call a garden, really. Gravelled over, there was only a singular plant pot within its entirety and the plant within it had seen better days. Wilted and wild with neglect, it was not much to look at. Still, it gave Harry's eyes somewhere to rest, as he awaited Ruth's arrival.

Her footsteps sounded softly as she approached the door and then there was a pause, as she presumably checked his identity through the peephole. Harry turned his eyes away from the garden again, desperately trying not to look as uneasy as he was. After what felt like an eternity, he heard the sound of the bolt sliding out of place. Nerves turned to momentary pleasure as the door swung open, Ruth appearing in the gap.

She was dressed for work, with the exception of her boots. Her hair was tied back at the nape of her neck. And, despite the inherent awkwardness of the moment, Harry was relieved to see that she was smiling.

"Hello," he said, softly, heart beating still faster as he made the greeting.

"Hello," she smiled back. "I just need to grab a few things and-," she was cut off, then, by the sound of something beeping in the other room. With a grimace, she abandoned the front door and stepped quickly back through to her kitchen, calling back over her shoulder; "come in, Harry."

Harry followed, at his own pace, shutting the door behind him.

The house was emptier than he remembered, from when Beth Bailey had been resident. It was, however, still scattered with various items. Ruth's things, he thought, with a smile. And the place was, undoubtedly, Ruth's place. A mess of shoes lay at the front door, hats and scarves hung haphazardly over coats and jumpers. Further in, two mismatched rugs led into the open plan living room/kitchen affair. Glancing up at the photographs hung along the wall of her staircase, Harry wandered through to the kitchen, drinking in the sights and smells of her.

She was standing at the oven when he arrived, poking at something in a tray.

"Bit early to be baking," he commented, lightly. Whatever it was smelt burnt.

Ruth looked over, cheeks flushing very slightly.

"I bake when I'm nervous," she admitted, eyes shy.

Harry hid a smile, looking down at what he assumed were once meant to be muffins.

"Are you any good?"

"I'm dreadful," she replied, without pause. "They're completely inedible."

A tiny laugh escaped his lips, despite his best efforts to stop it.

Ruth did not seem to mind too much. Discarding the tray of muffins to the sink, she brushed her hands free of crumbs and flicked off the oven. Then, she stepped over towards him, coming to a halt just a few feet away. Harry felt a slight twinge of disappointment when she did not continue. The gap between them was so small and her eyes were soft in the morning light. He wouldn't mind forgoing coffee, Harry thought, if it meant he could just stand here and kiss her.

Ruth, perhaps, was sharing similar thoughts. Head tilted slightly back, to meet his eyes, she bit at the inside of her lip. Though her face was anxious, however, her eyes were quite sure. This was not the skittish girl he had asked to dinner, all those years ago. There was still a hint of that girl, in the way she moved and the inflections of her speech, but this was a different Ruth. She was a little older and a little more broken, but she looked a little calmer, too.

"Can I kiss you, again?" he asked, softly, not quite able to stop himself.

As the worlds left his lips, a flicker of pleasure passed across her face. Covering it with a blush and a nervous clear of her throat, Ruth nodded.

"Yes."

"Good." Their heads leaned slightly closer, as if my magnetism rather than choice. Harry faltered, just an inch or so away, lifting his eyes to hers. She was watching him back, just a hint of reservation there. "I like kissing you."

That hint of reservation flitted away and Ruth's cheeks flushed a little pinker.

"Good," she murmured, looking down at his lips, presumably to avoid the intensity of his eyes. She was still a little shy, but she looked pleased along with it, thought Harry. Indeed, she turned out to be so pleased that it was her who made the next move.

Eyes never parting from his lips, Ruth tilted back her chin and closed the few centimetres between them.

As their lips met, Harry felt his shoulders relax, all the tension in his body sliding away. She had kissed him, rather than waiting for him to kiss her. It was a simple movement of acceptance and yet filled him with boundless joy. She wasn't going to run. They were standing, bathed in the cold light of morning, and she wasn't going to change her mind. Body singing out in pleasure, he returned her gentle touch, lips parted just ever-so-slightly. Not too much, not too fast, he reminded himself. He would just taste her and no more.

It was a sweet kiss, warm, undemanding and done with infinite sincerity. It lasted only for a few seconds but, when she was finished, Ruth surprised him by not drawing back. Instead, she let her body fall a little closer towards his, hand rising to rest against his forearm. Harry stood quite still, breathing her in – allowing himself to get carried away in the scent and the heat of her. His hand had fallen to her waist, in response to her reaching out to him, and Harry could feel the heat of her body, even through her thick cotton dress. At the trace of his thumb against her side, her breath caught, but she did not draw away.

Harry swallowed. Every inch of him was aware that they had never let themselves touch like this before. It had always been glancing brushes, nothing more. Occasionally, she would seek out contact, but it was always fleeting and never lasted long enough for Harry to reciprocate. He had never felt her before, not like this. Even last week, during their embrace on the rooftop, they had been wearing too many clothes to feel each other's fingers. Now, however, he could feel every movement she made. Standing in the sunlit warmth of her kitchen, Harry could feel her blood pumping hard beneath the surface of her skin. He could feel the erratic rise and fall of her ribs, as she tried to breathe slowly. He could feel the nip of her fingernails as her hand wrapped tighter around his forearm.

Her body tensed a little and she leant forwards, pressing a second, softer kiss against his lips. Once she had placed that kiss, Ruth did draw back – but not so very far back. Giving him a little smile, she lowered her chin. Her hand remained on Harry's arm, her eyes hooked resolutely on his. A tumult of emotions lay deep to their surface but he was almost positive that none of them was regret.

"Okay?" he asked, quietly.

"Okay," she confirmed.

Harry wasn't quite okay himself, of course, but Ruth did not need to know that. His heart was a little faster than he would have liked, his breathing a little shallower. His skin was flushed with blood. It felt hot, even compared to the warmth of her side. The appearance of control, however, was almost as good as the real thing – and Harry was good at faking it.

"How about that coffee, then?" he asked, taking a step back.

His fingers fell from the curve of her waist as he moved slightly out of her reach. Ruth's hand fell to her side.

She nodded. "Yes, of course," giving a half-shake of herself, she began to look around the kitchen, searching for her belongings. "I'll just grab a few things."

"Take your time," Harry told her, moving to stand next to her kitchen counter. The cool surface provided a solid grounding for him, as Ruth scurried about the kitchen, gathering the things she would need for the day. Slowly, as she went about her business, his heart rate began to return to normal.

As it turned out, it took a lot longer to collect 'a few things' than Harry could ever have expected. Ruth managed to find her bag, her coat and her keys without much ado, but had to migrate into the next room in search of her boots.

Harry followed her through and leant against the doorframe, watching her forage around, checking under discarded pillows and piles of miscellaneous items. He knew he shouldn't be surprised, by the apparent lack of order in her flat. At the office, her desk was always the most chaotic, more often than not stacked high with files and notes and assorted boxes. He had, at first, that her desk was a mess because she was disorganised, but she had proven that wrong by being the most efficient analyst he had ever employed. After a long period of careful observation, then, Harry had realised that Ruth's desk only _looked_ like a mess.

From the outside perspective, her ordering system did not make sense. Things were not stacked according to dates or any usual method which Harry could fathom, (he found that out when he went to her desk, one day when she was gone, to try and find a personnel file). They were organised, instead, in a fashion which Ruth and only Ruth could understand. There were various factors that went into the classification of any piece of paperwork. He knew it was something to do with clearance levels, alphabetisation, post-it notes and highlighted coversheets, but Harry had long since given up on learning the intricacies.

Looking around her house, he wondered if it was ordered the same way, of if this was the real deal – genuine disorder. It would drive him insane, he thought, watching Ruth cry out in triumph as she found her boots underneath the couch. He needed to know where things were all the time. He needed the control.

"Why don't you just leave them in the same place every night?" he asked, as Ruth pulled on her boots.

She raised an eyebrow.

"Because I'm not _in_ the same place, each night, when I take them off."

Of course, Harry smiled to himself, how silly of him.

They left by the front door, locking it behind them, and had mundane chat about the weather all the way to the car. Conversation, then, fell to the car and Harry's company car and then Harry's driver. Harry chatted back, filling the silences with comments of his own and a joke or two. Ruth asked where on earth they were going to get coffee this early on a Sunday morning and Harry told her not to worry about it. He had a plan. She just half-smiled and left it at that.

Beyond the car's windows, London sparkled in the early morning frost. Harry drove through it leisurely, finding no anger in the traffic as he had earlier that morning. With the sun rising higher into the sky, it promised to be a beautiful day. Harry's shoulders felt uncharacteristically light. There was no other place in the world that he would rather be than here; driving her through the frost-shimmering city, listening as she babbled on about congestion charges and threw glances at him which heated the skin across the nape of his neck. Despite the prickling of nerves in his stomach, he had not felt so happy in years.

What an odd creature he had become, Harry thought. His younger self wouldn't have recognised him. Blushing like a schoolboy as she smiled, torn between sticking to the plan for coffee – where he would undoubtedly say something wrong and ruin this – and driving straight back home, to seduce her into his bed. He was almost sure he could do it, if the way she was watching him now was anything to go by. He wouldn't, though. Ruth had asked him for time and she so rarely asked anything of him.

They drove on a little while, arriving in the city centre more quickly than Harry had expected. Due to it being a weekend, the roads were far emptier than usual and there were fewer busses running. Steering through the sparse traffic, Harry pulled into an underground car lot usually reserved for the Service's pool cars. It was half a block away from Thames House itself, but Harry would not mind the walk today. He had excellent company, after all.

Indeed, by the time they passed through security and parked in the darkened car lot, Ruth had relaxed quite a bit. She was chattering on less, finally allowing comfortable silences grow between them, between stretches of conversation. She even plucked up the courage to talk about them.

"I suppose I always thought it would pass," she told him, as she climbed out of the car and slammed the door behind her.

Harry followed, clicking the doors shut, eyes never leaving Ruth's.

"Even after a year?" He asked her, wondering if he had always inspired so much little faith in women. Did he look like a man who was prey to fleeting fancies? Or was it just that Ruth knew about his dating past?

"Even after two years," Ruth admitted.

Harry hid a wince and followed her up, out of the car lot.

The air outside was fresh and cold. At the security barrier, the men on patrol did not ask to see their identifications twice (there were some advantages, after all, to being Sir Harry Pearce) so they passed through without pause. Ruth took the lead as they stepped onto the street, turning away from the slumbering Thames House and down towards the river. As she could not know where he was taking her for coffee, Harry had to assume she was heading this way out of habit. The thought brought a small smile to his lips and he shoved his hands in his pockets, quickening his pace to fall into step beside her.

They had walked this street many times before, in the many years they had known each other. Some days, they had walked it fast, desperate to get somewhere and prevent some atrocity from happening. Other days, their pace had been more ponderous – some days almost hesitant, as they both skirted around painful topics and left too much unsaid. They were not walking fast or ponderously, today, but somewhere in between. The pace was one of two people with a goal in mind, made a little faster than usual because of the cold in the air.

As they arrived at a street crossing, Harry felt memories flicker through him.

He had taken her arm right here, one day; on the corner, in the rain, he had taken her arm to stop her from stepping out into the road as a bus pulled out from its stop, further down the street. She had been talking animatedly, at the time, telling him something that had once been so important. Odd, thought Harry. Whatever she had been talking about was now completely lost to the mists of time, but the flash of delight in her eyes, as he had pulled her back, had stayed with him quite vividly. Blue eyes. Beautiful eyes. Maybe he fell in love with her that day. He couldn't quite be sure.

He gave a sigh, as they came to halt at the same crossing. Six years on from the incident, she still managed to get dangerously close to the curb before showing any sign that she was going to stop and check for traffic. She did glance up and down, however, but only quickly. Then, her attentions turned back to Harry and she smiled, a little shyly.

"What?" she asked.

His lips gave a twitch, but Harry did not answer. It would have laid the tension right out in the open again, to have explained, and he couldn't bring himself to do it. For the first time in months, Ruth did not look worried or hurt. He wanted to preserve the lightness of the moment a little longer.

"We're going that way," he nodded, instead, towards the other side of the road.

Ruth let him lead from then on, relegating herself back her usual position at his side and half a pace behind. "Did you not think it would fade?" she asked, referring back to what had made Harry wince; two years of doubting his intentions, believing that their attraction was doomed to be short-lived. "Did you not think it would pass, in time?"

A sigh caught in Harry's throat.

Had he ever shared her doubts? He knew the answer to that, of course, but it fell into the category of his earlier thoughts – the sort of thing that would break the wonderful light-heartedness of the moment. So, he shrugged his shoulders in reply rather than speaking, to spare himself some time. They crossed the road, Ruth a little behind of him, glancing up at him every few seconds. Clearly, she was waiting for a more succinct answer. Eventually, once they had run out of road to cross and shrugs for Harry hide behind, he had no choice but to give it to her.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Perhaps I might have, at first," he offered, but she just frowned very slightly, so he forced himself to continue. "But I've had my share of short-term relationships, Ruth. This never felt like any of them."

Surprise lit in her eyes, at his admission, and Harry directed his eyes away again.

What he had said was the truth. Ruth may have fallen first, but Harry had fallen deepest. She may have toyed with the idea of them for longest but he had been the one who had been overcome by it. It had all happened rather suddenly, and without warning. What was, at first, just shy attraction had quickly turned to pure lust, then to something deeper which ached in his belly when he looked at her – something darker and altogether more dangerous. Their love had changed over time, of course, as befitted the changes that had come to both of them. It had morphed and shifted, becoming almost alien to how it had begun. In all that time, however, it had never faded. It had never dulled, nor lost its potency.

And Harry had never expected it to. He had known from the moment he realised he was in love with her, that Ruth would consume his life. How to tell her that, however, he had no idea. He may have studied literature at Oxford but, in the moment, the English language failed him. So, he just watched her, as she frowned back at him, asking for more.

"How did you know it was different, though?" she demanded.

Much to Harry's surprise, she did not seem too phased by this turn of conversation. Perhaps it was the fact that they were on the move, he thought. He knew he always found it easier to talk about things out in the open. Inside a closed room, a conversation such as this one might have made him feel trapped. Out in the open air, it was better. Still, sharing truths that he had kept to himself for nearly seven years was not easy. He had spent so long hiding the ways he loved her that explaining them felt strange.

"I just knew," he told her.

Ruth sighed softly, clearly not satisfied with his answer.

There was a quasi-awkward moment, where Harry toyed with the idea of holding the silence. Then, he overrode his neuroses and forced himself to speak again. They had resolved not to keep secrets when they did not have to, after all. They had agreed to talk, instead of run away. He would not be the one to break that agreement – to break the 'them' he and Ruth were trying to form.

"I had never felt like this before," he admitted, squirming under the weight of the cliché. "Whatever it was that was between us, it was different. Slower, perhaps, or deeper, or just..." He paused, desperately searching for a word to describe how it was different.

After a few seconds, Ruth interjected, softly. "More?"

"Yes," he nodded, lifting his eyes to meet hers and feeling wholeheartedly glad that they had known each other for so long. He felt suddenly a bit foolish for feeling for holding back his words. This was Ruth. She knew him. She knew him better than anybody on this earth. "More," he echoed, softly.

Ruth gave a nod, this time, and turned to face forwards. Though she was in profile, now, and – despite her newfound bravery, in pushing on with such an emotionally-fraught conversation – Harry could see the slight pinking of her cheeks. It could have been from the cold sting of the wind and it would have looked like such, to anyone passing. But it had not been there, moments before. And Harry knew it was for him.

The pair of them continued along the quiet pavement.

.


	3. Chapter 3

_._

_Chapter 3 – Little Things_

.

Like everything involving Harry, coffee was nothing like Ruth expected it to be. It was warm and comfortable and surprisingly intimate, considering they were seated among twenty other people, packed into the only cafe on the street that was open, so early on a Sunday morning. Harry chose a seat in the corner next to the window, back to the wall – one which she had commented was very suitable, for two spooks – and they had made themselves comfortable, despite knowing that they would soon have to rise again and head in to work.

It had all been surprisingly easy, surprisingly natural. Coffee came and they drank it, talking about everything and nothing. Conversation strayed, once or twice, onto the subject of work but Harry always steered them away. What he had said to her on the Thames House rooftop, last week, came back to her each time he did. We have time, he had told her, we can make time, for us.

And so, it seemed, they could. Sitting amongst the bustle and chatter of the little coffee bar, Ruth felt happier than she had in years. They talked and laughed. Harry's hand reached across at one point, under the guise of adding sugar to his coffee, and their hands met. The sugar had been quickly forgotten and they had continued to touch, long after the moment had passed. Turning her palm over, he had traced lazy circles across it, with his thumb.

He was still doing it, now; the movements were soft and incredibly dexterous, for hands which were so much larger than Ruth's own. She wondered, with a hint of a blush, what they would feel like on more intimate patches of skin.

"What on earth are you thinking?" Harry asked softly, startling her from her reverie.

"Hm?"

Ruth felt her cheeks redden a little more and tried to hide the movement by looking elsewhere. Harry did not relinquish his hold on her hand, however, so her movements were in vain. He could feel her heartbeat quicken, under her skin. What did it matter, anyway, she asked herself with a resigned sigh. Harry knew what she wanted, from him. Harry wanted the same, from her. They wanted each other and all that they had to offer. Sex was part of that. They were adults. She could let him see that, now. Still, she could hardly talk about it outright, in a public place. Ruth had never been that girl.

"I was thinking that we barely knew each other, really," she offered instead.

For a moment, her comment seemed to throw Harry and he looked a little worried – perhaps assuming that she was using the excuse of not knowing each other well to draw away from him again. Sympathy sprung up in her chest and she hastened to clarify her position.

"I meant little things, likes and dislikes, favourite foods, stupid things like that." She smiled when he looked relieved. "I'm not running away, Harry," she added, softly.

He squeezed her hand, then, to Ruth's mild disappointment, withdrew from her touch and folded his hands atop the table.

"Well, what would you like to know, then?" he asked, with the air of a man who wanted to do this right.

It almost made Ruth smile again, but she held herself back. He was trying, she told herself, he was really trying to make this work and make this comfortable for her. That he was barely functional beyond an official capacity was not his fault. He had spent the last twenty or so years with minimal interaction with the outside world. He was a loner, a workaholic and, above and beyond it all, a spook. Give him time, Ruth told herself, watching his soft eyes watch her. In time, she could help him come back to the world beyond Thames House. Maybe she could teach him, for once. Not that her social life was altogether more impressive...

"Favourite colour," she demanded, hiding her smile behind serious eyes.

Harry wrinkled his nose.

"Is that really the first thing you want to know?" he asked, in mild disbelief.

"Yes," Ruth answered, firmly. "It's wrong to know someone for nearly eight years and not know their favourite colour."

"I might be keeping that information secret for national security reasons."

"How could that possibly have national security reasons?" Ruth frowned.

"It could a password, of some sort."

"A password?"

"Part of a password..."

A couple of seconds passed.

"Well, is it?"

"No." Harry admitted, grudgingly. Another few seconds passed then he sighed and looked around, thoughtfully. "Okay," he told her softly. "It's red, but don't tell anyone, I'm trying to lull them into a false sense of security with a succession of blue ties."

Ruth chuckled out loud.

Red seemed right, for Harry. Red was for power and hunger and passion. Red was for danger and adrenaline and thrill. And for love, she reminded herself, and for blood. It seemed fitting that a man such as Harry would like red. Though, she found as she examined her thoughts on the matter, she had not been expecting it. She would have gone for blue. Maybe his tie colour theory had more basis than she gave him credit for.

"Why on earth would you not want people to know your favourite colour?" she asked him, softly.

Harry shrugged.

"The more people know about you, the more they have to hurt you with. I know my favourite colour seems innocuous but many other truths aren't, and it's easier to hold them all back than to pick and chose. I don't like being hurt," he told her, solidly. "Its right up there, on the dislikes list, with hot water either, cold tiled floors, the smell of lavender, and rice pudding. Oh," he added, as if remembering something important. "And velvet. I really don't like velvet"

"Velvet?" Ruth exclaimed. "How can anyone not like velvet?"

"I assure you, it's possible. It just doesn't feel right," he elaborated. "It feels like peaches, which I don't like either, incidentally."

Another laugh bubbling up in her throat.

At the back of her mind she was thinking that, despite her initial scepticism, Harry was probably right. She could probably torture him just that little bit more efficiently, knowing those small details. The thought was a slightly sobering one. Harry had kept such things to himself, Ruth realised, because he had nobody else he trusted enough. He had her now, though, she reminded herself, and he was sharing, albeit slightly hesitantly. She pushed forwards again, with another question, not giving either of them time to draw back into their shells.

"Favourite time of year?"

"This time," he told her and then explained his choice with, "there are fewer bombs in January."

Ruth frowned. Too work-related, she told him with her eyes.

"Okay..." Harry sighed. "January is perhaps too cold and wet to be my favourite. I do like autumn, though. It's the leaves, I think, beautiful colours."

"Still cold though." Ruth pointed out.

"I suppose you are a summer girl?"

She nodded. "Much more so. I hate the cold."

"It makes the warmth feel better, comparatively, though." Harry mused, softly. "I like walking outside, then coming in and letting the heat wash over me."

There was something strangely metaphorical about his statement and Ruth found herself falling into his gaze a little as he said it. She was in love with a man who liked the colour red, for blood and love, who liked the autumn, when leaves were all dying gloriously around him, and who liked to stand in the cold just so that he could feel the warmth a little better. She knew Harry had killed and lied and done terrible things in his past –and would no doubt do terrible things in his future – but that moment more clearly highlighted their differences than any of that.

Ruth liked hot summer nights and the smell of cut grass. She liked snow in the winter but only to look at, really. She hated the cold. She liked the colour blue, not red, and she found autumn strangely melancholic. They were opposites, then, in many ways – but Ruth knew that did not matter. They were bound by something stronger than seasonal preferences. They were bound by time and history and a similarity of loss. They had lost a lot, including each other. That was what held them together more than anything else, thought Ruth. The might not understand each other's likes and dislikes, or even the choices they had made in their lives, but they understood each other's pain.

"Favourite food?" she asked him, to try and hide how she had drifted off in thought.

"Probably waffles," Harry admitted, and that brought a smile to Ruth's lips all over again.

"Sweet tooth, good to know."

"Not good for me," he pointed out, "I'm getting fatter, for it."

"I hear exercise sorts that out," Ruth told him, softly, surprising herself by not blushing as she thought of a very specific type of exercise.

A slight shift in his forehead told Ruth that Harry might be sharing her thought, but he said nothing and, thankfully, Ruth managed to keep her cheeks from colouring. Her boss's eyes remaining fixed very acutely on hers, for a couple of seconds. Then, the intensity dissipated from his gaze and was replaced with a gentle smile.

"Probably should get on that," he commented, nonchalantly.

Ruth hummed.

They sat for a bit, listening to the chatter of the cafe around them and sipping at their coffee. Ruth's was getting a little cold, now, but she persisted with dragging it out. The moment the coffee was gone, she would start to feel self-conscious about sitting here, taking up seats, and she might be tempted to suggest leaving for work. And she didn't want that – not really. She was fairly sure that Harry did not want to go either. He had finished even less coffee than she had.

"This is not exactly a reciprocal game, is it?" he asked her, after a minute or so had passed.

Ruth frowned. "How so?"

"You are getting a lot of information and in return, I am getting-,"

"-the pleasure of my company?" Ruth suggested.

Harry laughed.

"Well, yes, I suppose," he took another small sip of coffee. "There is that."

"You can ask too, if you'd like," Ruth offered, feeling nerves roil in her stomach. What would he ask, what would she tell him? The truth, if it was nothing too sinister, she decided and wondered, dimly, if he had made the same decision upon commencing the game. Had he told her the whole truth? Probably. She trusted Harry and she was hardly asking difficult questions, after all. All she wanted to know was his favourite colour. She had not ventured near any subjects she deemed emotionally-charged, such as his ex-wife and children.

"We could alternate?" Harry suggested.

"Quid pro quo," Ruth smiled. "Okay then. I think it's probably your turn."

Forehead furrowing, slightly, Harry considered his first question at great length before asking, "Where did you go, that first day you left us in London. Where did that barge take you?"

Ruth swallowed hard. Harry must have known it would drop the temperature of the conversation by ten degrees, but he had said it anyway. That meant that the answer meant more to him than his immediate comfort, she thought, trying nervously to find an answer.

The truth was, Ruth would happily have told him all about the time they spent apart. She would happily have told him how she travelled and who she met, and the days that were so terrible that she considered crawling back to him and begging him to let her stay – damn the consequences for either of them. She would happily have told him about finding her way to Cyprus and how she had met George, a handsome Doctor. She would happily tell him everything but she was terrified, absolutely terrified, that somehow telling him these things would push them apart again.

Beneath his outer layers of cool, Ruth knew that Harry was riddled with guilt, over all the things he had done, the people he had hurt. Some hurts had been intentional. Others, like what had happened to George, could not have happened any other way. George's death still haunted Ruth, but she now knew that there had been no other ending to that situation than what had played out. Harry could not have made any other choice. The Uranium had to stay out of the terrorist's hands. By rights, none of them should have emerged from that situation alive. They were lucky, Ruth reminded herself, whenever she felt the pull of guilt and grief. She and Harry and Nico had survived. So many had died for so much less, she knew that she had to be grateful for that.

Even in the days immediately following George's death, Ruth could not bring herself to blame Harry for what had happened. She blamed herself for bringing the terror of her previous life to George and Nico's world. She blamed the world for throwing so many unfortunate choices her way. She blamed the job – and there she was right in laying the blame – but she couldn't blame Harry.

She should have known, really, that she couldn't just forget about her previous life. Such things as she had done and seen could not be wiped away by a few years and the distance of a few countries. Try as she might to start again, Ruth's job had caught up with her. It was always going to be a part of her, she realised now. She would always be a spook and she would always carry secrets. Perhaps that was what was so promising about herself and Harry, she mused. They did not have to separate what they were at work from what they were at home. They could love each other for what they were – two broken old spooks, both carrying so many secrets. They could share the burden, whenever possible. They could come home and not lie about their day.

That would be nice, Ruth thought with a smile, coming home to Harry.

Maybe soon, she told herself. Maybe soon.

"Florence," she told Harry softly, looking down at her hands. "When the barge let me off, I got a bus to Luton and used the money Malcolm had given me to get a flight to Paris. From there, I went on to Florence. It felt somehow wrong to stay in Paris," she added, with a hint of a blush. "It was stupid, I suppose, but after we had talked about it, it was somewhere I didn't really want to be alone."

When she looked up at him, her boss looked desperately apologetic.

"Oh, don't look at me like that, Harry," Ruth shook her head, "it wasn't so terrible. I went to Florence, I explored and read and healed," crying myself to sleep every night, until I couldn't cry anymore, she added inside. "Then, I moved on," she finished, aloud.

Harry swallowed, hard.

"Where to?"

"Rome, then Venice, then a few places along the coast. I went south and across the Med to Cairo, then flew across to Morocco and stayed there for six months, or so, teaching English at a little international school in Casablanca. Maternity cover," she explained. "I flew out to Turkey in 2007, when the full-time teacher returned."

Harry shifted in his seat and Ruth bit at the inside of her lip. She knew what was coming next.

"Turkey?"

"Yes. Ankara."

"When?"

Her nerves hit again and she hesitated, not sure if she wanted to share this, but knowing that he already suspected and she really might as well. The game required full disclosure, after all. "April," she told him, softly, then waited for the blow to come.

A couple of seconds passed and then Harry let out a slow sigh. "I was in Ankara in April," he stated, softly.

"I know," Ruth admitted.

A very long silence hit.

Of course she knew. She had kept a very close watch on what was going on in that first year she had spent away from him. During her initial tenure at Thames House, she had run more assets than the rest of the team combined. She had picked up assets when other officers had died. She had collated information on the assets of those who were still alive. Ruth had left MI5 with a highly-functioning network of information. Indeed, she had often mused that she would have been ideally placed to become a private investigator of sorts – or, perhaps, an assassin. She never would have, of course, quite apart from the gross illegality of it all, she could not bear to ever be working against Harry and his team. So, she had slipped off and done her own thing, using her degree in Classics to obtain teaching positions and doing secretarial work here and there.

She had kept an eye on Harry, though, through her network. It had felt a little pathetic, at times, a little creepy even, but she could not help herself. She had found out he was going to Turkey the same week that her lease came to an end, in Morocco. So, she had chosen the cheap flight to tension-stricken Turkey rather than the more sensible alternative – a transatlantic flight to New York.

"I saw you arrive, that first night, at the consulate," she admitted, softly. "I was sitting in the cafe, across the street."

Harry watched her with a completely veiled expression.

"How did you find me?" he asked, voice flat.

"I kept an eye on you, all of you, after I left. I," she paused, swallowed, then forced herself to continue. "I just wanted to know you were all safe. I heard you were going to be in Turkey quite by accident and, well, I had always wanted to go there..." Ruth drifted off, lowering her eyes to the table. Any way she put it, it sounded a little silly, a little sentimental, and a lot stalker-ish. "I missed you," she finished lamely.

For a long few seconds, Harry was silent, his emotions hidden deep within an expressionless face. Then, he let out a low sigh.

"I wish I'd known, Ruth,"

"No you don't," she replied quickly. Of this she was sure. "It was awful, not being able to do anything but watch. It was the day I severed all ties with my network." It was the day she had forsaken any hope of returning to England and to him, she added silently, in her mind. "I cut off contact with my assets, burned the identities and bank account details Malcolm gave me, and turned away to start a new life. I stayed in Ankara for a few days," she told Harry, "only long enough to find a way to Cyprus. A local cruise captain was looking for staff, for the first leg of his trip, so I agreed to work for him in return for passage. When I reached Cyprus, I decided to stay." Swallowing, Ruth lowered her eyes, remembering the Island she had fallen in love with. "I made a life there. I got a job, I made friends and I rented a little house by the sea. It was simple and elegant, and beautiful. George was beautiful, too, Harry. He made me happy."

There was a plethora of expression on her boss's face, now. Predominant was longing and guilt but there was jealousy too, dark in his eyes.

"I'm glad you were happy," he told her, sounding almost pained by the words.

Ruth held his gaze for a long time.

"He was never you, Harry."

They sat together, expressions flickering and shifting as they came to terms with what they had shared.

"This is some game," Harry murmured eventually.

Ruth felt her throat a little tight, her eyes a little watery, but she let out a tiny laugh instead of a sob. "Yes. Some game." Clearing her throat, she reached her hand a little out across the table and felt a soaring elation when Harry took it, sliding his fingers in-between hers. "You should start with an easier question, next time."

At her words, Harry looked a little relieved.

"There will be a next time, then? You're not going to change your mind about this now that you've found out I have too much curiosity and not enough tact?"

A soft laugh trickled from her lips. "Found out? Harry, I've known you had no tact for years, now. And as for the curiosity, it's what we do and I don't mind," she added, rubbing her thumb against his own.

The friction tickled delightfully through her body, warming depths of her which had not been warmed that way in years. Physical comfort truly was restoring, she thought, as Harry tightened his grip on her. Ruth had half a mind to ask him if he wanted to get out of here – to go back to hers for the next hour, before their meeting with the Home secretary. They didn't quite have enough time, though, she told herself, sighing through the disappointment, and she did not want this to be rushed. So, she just gripped his fingers tighter with her own and turned her mind away from the present, to the future.

"I don't mind you asking, Harry," she repeated, softly. "I want you to know these things. I want you to know me." She wanted him to know all of her. Taking a steadying breath, she pushed herself to ask the question she wanted to ask, before cowardice took over and she could change her mind. "I know we have to get going soon, for the meeting," she blurted out, "but I was wondering if would you like to come over later?"

Harry looked genuinely surprised by her question and Ruth felt her smile stretch a little wider, despite her embarrassment at being so brazen.

"Over... to your place?" he asked, delicately.

"Yes. Over to mine. We could have dinner, talk some more."

"At your flat?"

"I can cook you know," she told him gently, as he continued to look hesitant. It was a joke, to lighten the mood, because Ruth knew fine well that Harry was not worried about her cookery skills. It was the nature of dinner which had given him cause of reticence. She had invited him into her personal space, at night, with her intentions clear in the air. Both of them knew this was more than just dinner.

Eventually, Harry cleared his throat and spoke again, his tone still slightly reserved. "I was going to ask you for dinner when I called you, last night," he admitted softly. "There's a really nice place across town that I thought we could try. I thought it might be too much, though, so I decided on coffee in the end." He still looked a little torn over what to answer, in response to her question. Perhaps he thought she had offered out of courtesy, or that it was a trick of some sort, to catch him out.

Ruth felt inclined to assure him that it wasn't.

"It isn't too much, Harry," she told him, softly. "I'd like to go out to dinner sometime but, tonight, I'd prefer this, if that's okay with you." Clearing her throat, she turned her eyes down to their interlinked hands. "It would be nice to talk somewhere private." Though the cafe was intimate enough, with everyone else in the room thoroughly absorbed in their own discussions, there were some questions just not suitable for public places. Ruth quietly told him as much, blushing at the intent in her statement. "I'd like to be able to ask whatever we want to," she explained, lifting her eyes shyly to Harry's, "and for it to be just us, for once."

She wanted to be able to touch him without worrying about anyone watching. She wanted to be able to kiss him without wondering if they close enough to work to risk being seen by passing colleagues. She wanted everything else to fade away and let them just be two people, for once, rather than the spooks they had to be during the daytime. She wanted to know him and for him to know her, completely. She wanted everything. He would not begrudge her that, surely, she thought, watching his eyes dance across hers.

They were half golden from the winter sunlight streaming through the window. Often on the Grid, they were dark, almost brown. She almost preferred them like this, though. It meant she could see his pupils widen for her, all the more clearly.

"Yes, then," Harry replied, softly, after a few moments of consideration. "I'd like that."

He gave a little nod, hair catching the sunlight too and looking a little golden more golden than grey. It was like catching glimpse of a many-years-younger man, thought Ruth with a smile. Had he been this nervous the first time he had accepted an invite back to a woman's house? Had he been a shy lover, then? Was he a shy lover now? Ruth doubted it very much. Harry's personnel file had 'permission to socialise' forms half a mile high and, Ruth was more than a little ashamed to admit, she had peeked at a fair few of them. The majority had been filed within the last fifteen years, since he had taken his current posting. Before that, she realised, he had been married and any affairs he had carried out were probably undocumented.

Jane, his ex-wife, had received her fair amount of Ruth's scrutiny too. From the information included in the MI5 file, Ruth had learned that she was Oxford educated, with a degree in English Lit and Classics. That was where Jane's similarities to herself had ended, however. The photographs showed Harry's ex wife to be a tall woman, willowy and blonde. Even in the still frames, she looked graceful and elegant. Appearance wise, Ruth would go so far as to call them polar opposites. She was a little intimidated by it, to be perfectly honest. Finding out about Harry's relationship with Elena Gavrik, Harry's beautiful Russian asset who had turned out to be a beautiful KGB spy, only increased the feeling so inadequacy.

Still, it hardly mattered, she told herself now. Harry was here, with her, holding her hand. He was older, now, so perhaps his tastes had changed. Or perhaps, said that little voice at the back of her mind – the one which rarely said anything constructive – he was just settling. Oh shut up, she told herself firmly. Paranoia was a waste of time. Life was too short not to revel in the moment. And what a moment she had made to revel in. She had just asked the man who she had loved for seven years to come to her house, tonight. She had asked him, with only the thinnest veil over her desires, and he had said yes. He wants you, she chided herself, stop trying to analyse and enjoy it!

"Come over about seven?" Ruth forced out, against her natural urge to shy away.

Harry nodded.

"Seven."

Her breath escaped her in a soft rush. "Good."

Both smiled and Ruth felt another rush of nerves, combined with a now-familiar warmth in the pit of her stomach. They were actually going to do this. Seven years on, Harry was coming to her house and they were going to spend an evening like two normal people. Food, talk, maybe more. It felt right. Ruth was almost entirely sure that she would not panic and run away. Coffee had been wonderful and every touch had left her surer that they had made the right choice. They were going to work. Seven years had been a long time to wait, but this would be good. Harry would be good. Hopefully, she wouldn't be a disappointment.

Ruth shook herself slightly, banishing the thought. Shut up, she told herself, you've never doubted yourself before and you won't start now. It was just because it was Harry, she told herself. Their relationship had been different to all of her others right from the off. Sex was bound to be no different. Besides, tonight was not the be-all and end-all, she reminded herself. They might not even end up in bed, tonight, and even if they did it was no ultimatum. Their entire future was not dependent on one night's performance. They had plenty of time to learn each other and learn they would, in time. They were going to make a life together. They were going to have a home.

That thought thrilled her more than she could ever explain.

Soon, their coffee was finished, but the pair showed no intention of moving from their seats. Occasionally touching, more than occasionally smiling, they whittled away at each other's most superfluous secrets. Ruth learned that Harry liked chocolate, hated gin, hadn't taken a personal day in over five years, and still went took Wes Carter to the dog track every second Sunday of the month. It probably wasn't the most appropriate venue, he told her, looking slightly bashful, but Wes seemed to like it and they both had memories of Adam there. Ruth told him that she thought it was a lovely idea. In turn for his sharing, Harry learned that Ruth had been on the University swim team, did not yet have a favourite book, and had been a punk metal fan in her youth. They both laughed a lot at that last point.

Neither spook was keeping any track of time, so half eight came and went without them moving from their spot. The cafe had all but emptied by the time Harry's phone began to ring, startling them from their illusion of isolation from the world and plunging them back into life in the service of the country. As per usual, it was Erin Watts, with a string of requests. The Home Secretary had contacted her, to push their meeting back fifteen minutes, she needed more personnel on the Grid after something big had come up, Dimitri had run another car off the road and Calum wanted a second chance at sitting his firearm refresher course, which he had failed earlier that month. The perils of being the boss on a good Grid day, thought Ruth, with a little smile.

Harry took it all in his stride. In fact, he seemed to secretly enjoy attending to such menial tasks. Then again, they were probably a welcome relief from the bone-chilling terrors he faced on their bad days.

They paid up for coffee and went on their way, dawdling just a little as they drew closer to Thames House. As the conversation fell back around to work again, the mood became a suddenly strained.

So this was the transition phase, between personal and professional, thought Ruth. Previously, this phase was one they had always handled by ignoring the personal aspect of their relationship. Now that they had resolved not to do that, however, they were left with strange awkward tension. Ruth watched Harry out of the corner of her eye. Did she say goodbye as his date then continue on with him, as his employee? Did he just want to gloss over the awkwardness and push on? What was the etiquette here?

As they passed the car park, Harry paused, turning to face her in the cold street.

"I'm glad we did this," he told her, with warm eyes.

The awkward tension in the moment faded away, in an instant. Ruth felt her cheeks colour, slightly, but she smiled.

"Me too," she murmured.

She wanted to kiss him. The urge was almost overpowering. They were so close and there was nobody around who knew them – not anyone Ruth could see, anyhow. God, she wanted to kiss him. Harry smiled, slightly, fine lines appearing around one eye with the movement. It only made Ruth want to kiss him more. God, this was pathetic, she told herself. She should either lean in and kiss him or pull back and be done with it. There was no point in mooning after him like a sick puppy! By the time she summoned up enough courage, however, something had happened nearby which had drawn Harry's gaze away and the moment was broken.

"I suppose we should be getting in," she said softly, once he had turned back towards her, muttering something dark about taxi drivers.

With a sigh, both of them glanced up the street, towards MI5's great stone headquarters. Its three dark doors beckoned to Ruth, though less than usual as Harry was not on the other side of them, this morning. Harry was here, beside her. Ruth chanced a look back over at him and saw that he looked a little put out by her haste to get inside.

"If we're any later, we'll keep Towers waiting," she explained, trying to cushion the blow.

Harry nodded, still looking a little disappointed that she had pulled away rather than leant in. Perhaps she should have kissed him, thought Ruth. Perhaps she still should. He spoke, however, and the moment where she could have pressed her lips to his passed. Another missed opportunity.

"I suppose we will do," Harry sighed.

There was a moments silence between them.

The sounds of London filtered in, filling it with noise. Road-works on the next street, the general buzz of traffic in the air, the footsteps of a hundred people walking into work, everything echoing off stone; it combined together in a rich auditory bouquet that was so distinct to the street outside Thames House. If Ruth closed her eyes and heard it alone, she knew she would still recognise her location. Harry probably could too, she thought, watching his eyes watch her. He had been here longer than she had. He had belonged to Section D before they had even moved to Thames House as their headquarters.

The old guard, she thought, with a smile. What was it between them? Thirteen years? She knew, of course, she knew exactly. It was thirteen years, two months and four days to be precise (and Harry liked it when she was precise). Some distant part of her sang out that it was probably quite wrong, what she felt for him, given such a difference. That same part of her was quickly silenced, however, as he caught her with slightly nervous eyes, clearing his throat.

"Ruth?"

"Yes?" she asked, slightly breathless. She always was when he caught her pondering them.

"Tonight, I could pick food up on the way over – save you cooking."

Her heart went out to him, it really did. He was trying so hard to make her comfortable. On impulse, more than anything, Ruth reached forwards and her hand found his gloved one, drawing it towards her. Fingers playing over his larger thumb, she smiled and shook her head.

"That would be good. I'd like that. It would save your taste buds, too."

"I'm sure that's not true," he replied, though the comment caused him to smile very slightly. Possibly, he was remembering the muffins she had been making when he had arrived to pick her up that morning.

Always the bloody gentleman, aren't you, Ruth thought, smothering a smile. Their hand-holding had drawn them rather closer that they were before and all of a sudden the only thing which made any sense was to tilt her head back and kiss him gently on the cheek. She had thought the movement completely on impulse, but there must have been some sign in her, of what she was going to do, because Harry turned his head slightly to one side, redirecting her brushing embrace to his lips. They touched, briefly, and then he pulled back again, perhaps not wanting to make her feel uncomfortable. It had been more his move than hers, after all, and they were in public – and not too far from work, where she had told him that she was not quite ready to make their relationship known.

There was no terror in Ruth's heart, however, when they drew apart. Instead, there was only pleasure and latent longing. Tonight would be good, she smiled to herself. This felt right. They had spent enough time dancing around each other. Now, let them have contact and comfort. It would be nice to lose themselves in one another, thought Ruth, lowering her eyes down Harry's face to his lips then up again to his slightly nervous eyes.

"Bring whatever you like," she told him, gently. "I eat anything but Thai food."

His eyes lightened, the nerves fleeing from them in an instant. "Okay. Seven, then?"

"Seven."

Ruth gave one last squeeze of his hand before letting go. Without his touch, she self suddenly bereft. The cold of the January air seemed somehow more biting, more acute. Lifting her hands to her neck, she tightened her scarf around it then shoved her un-gloved fingers back into her coat pocket.

"Shall we?" Harry asked, nodding towards their towering workplace.

Their time was over. They belonged to the Service again. With a soft sigh, Ruth nodded.

"Okay," she smiled at her boss. "Let's go."

.


	4. Chapter 4

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_Chapter 4 – Jurisdiction_

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Harry had never enjoyed the bustle and clamour of the Home Office. He had hated it when he had first been brought here, as Section Chief to Section D's previous Section Head, and he hated it now that he was the responsible figure, leading Erin Watts and Ruth Evershed down the building's long halls, towards the offices of the Home Secretary. At least Towers was less of a prick than the man who had sat in the chair when he was a young officer, thought Harry darkly, glancing sideways at his colleagues.

Erin looked like she was thoroughly enjoying herself. Despite her assurances that she had no desire to be a politician, Harry's Section Chief was more at home within these walls than Harry could ever hope to be. She walked with a quick, proud step slightly to Harry's left, long hair bouncing slightly with each footfall. She was a fairly beautiful woman. It was probably part the reason she fit so well, Harry thought silently. Unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or a silver tongue, the halls of politicians were a place for the beautiful and ambitious. Erin was both. His Ruth, on the other hand... Well, she was just beautiful.

Harry hid a smile as he glanced over his other shoulder. Ruth was busy ferreting through her bag for something, looking delightfully annoyed. Though she had grown used to being dragged along on errands, such as these, Harry knew she was far more at home working her magic on the Grid, or down in archives. She was an analyst, not a field officer and, though she knew enough to put half of Harry's junior field officers to shame, he knew she would always be reticent about stepping outside her job title. She was beautiful, but if she had had any ambitions beyond being an analyst, Harry suspected she would have left him for them, long ago. Let him be thankful that she didn't, he thought, as they stepped closer to the Home Secretary's receptionist. Today, he was going to need all her wits about him.

"Sarah," he greeted Towers' receptionist, by name.

A tall blonde-dyed woman, Sarah had been working in the department for nearly three years. Harry had plenty of cause to know her over the years. He was in and out of these offices as frequently as many of the men who worked in them. Over the years, he had learned that she was on close and personal terms with the Home Secretary. Thus far, however, he had refrained from mentioning it to anyone. It might come in useful, in the future, he told himself.

Harry liked Towers, as much as he could like any politician, but he had learnt his lesson about trusting men who sat in his chair. The great offices of power attracted men of great ambitions and very few of those were squeaky clean. That said, Towers was a lot more down-to-earth than many of his predecessors. He wielded his power with a moderate amount of humility and Harry hoped that he was as fair as he seemed. There was the personal aspect of the relationship too, he supposed. Towers had helped him back after Albany, had stuck his neck out by giving him support, during the tribunal. Still, Harry doubted he would ever stop collecting information on him. He was a spook, after all, and good spooks collect information on their friends as well as their enemies.

"Sir Harry," the receptionist shuffled papers on top of her desk. "The Home Secretary will be along very shortly. He has unfortunately been held up in traffic."

Unlikely, thought Harry, though he nodded anyway. Towers was probably holed up somewhere else in the building. When he had called Harry, earlier that morning, it was from a Home Office line.

The woman, Sarah, nodded towards the meeting room. "Feel free to go through. The others are already inside."

Harry gave a noise to the affirmative and headed towards the great dark door. Erin fell into pace beside him, Ruth in tow. Truth be told, Harry would much rather be heading in the opposite direction. In fact, he would much rather be heading in any other direction, but this was his job, his duty, the path he had chosen. As nauseated as he felt at the thought of spending the next half an hour in an enclosed space with his SIS counterpart, Harry knew it was a necessity.

As they stepped into the room, then, he forced his personal feelings away, allowing calm to flow in, in its place. Game face, he told himself, trying to look as stoic as he could. Erin and Ruth stepped into the room behind him and the three of them made their way towards the large table at the centre, their footsteps muffled by the thickly carpeted floors. The other three occupants of the room looked up as they entered, their eyes remaining rooted on Harry and his officers until they came to a stop beside the table.

Harry nodded to the assembled group.

"Richard," he greeted his counterpart with a smile.

Richard Neilson, London Branch Chief for the SIS, was a man in his early sixties. Though a good five years older than Harry, he conspicuously lacked a single grey hair. Rumour had it that he dyed what he had almost weekly. It was absurdly black. Harry rested his hands on the back of an empty chair as he took in the rest of the man on front of him. Neilson had always been rather stout but, over the last few months, he had become markedly slimmer. It was not uniform weight loss, however. Though the weight had left his midriff, his face remained relatively rounded. When he smiled, as he was doing now, Harry could not help but be reminded of a well-fed cat. It was the languid way his muscles moved, and the way his smile did not quite stretch to the eyes.

Best be wary, Harry reminded himself, even well-fed cats had claws. Neilson might look like an upper-class minion, but he was anything but harmless and Harry knew he would best remember that. Still, a little barb here and there could be constructive. He needed to find a tell, a weakness, and a little sarcasm went a long way.

Giving the man a taut smile, Harry pushed politely into conversation.

"I trust the drive over from Vauxhall Cross wasn't too taxing?"

"Oh, we just about managed," Neilson mirrored Harry's smile, eyes every bit as cool as before. "My congratulations, by the way, on your reinstatement," he added. "I don't think I've had the chance to talk to you, since. I expect you will be glad to have it all behind you. It was such a nasty business."

Ah, Harry grimaced internally. Albany. Why did it always come to Albany? Harry tried valiantly to maintain impassive expression. It was natural, he supposed, for his colleagues to be interested in his treason – and especially the reasons behind it. He would be just as interested if one of them had committed such an act. Suddenly, however, Harry felt very glad that he had not yet introduced Ruth by name. It would have made the situation ten times as awkward if Neilson had known she was the woman he traded state secrets for.

And as for the woman...

Though she was doing well not to look particularly interested in Neilson's comments, Harry noticed her shoulders had tensed as soon as the subject of Albany arose. Would she be as uneasy if they had not just come from having coffee, Harry wondered, trying to take in her expression without turning his head. Would she be awkward when they left the Home Office and headed back to work? Should he say something, when they leave, apologise? Should he defend her now, or just obliquely let Neilson know that Albany was a taboo subject? What would Ruth want him to do?

The boundaries of their new relationship were vague, at the moment. Harry supposed he would learn them, in time.

Working together was going to be harder than he had expected, though. Harry had realised that, that morning. Their gentle chatter, over coffee, had been warm and easy and wonderful. Apart from a few hiccups, they had made it all the way from her house to the coffee shop and out again without any moments of crippling embarrassment. Then, there had been that awkward moment, as they had walked back to Thames House together, dawdling in the cold air. What she was thinking, Harry still could not be sure, but it had to be something about their dual nature of their relationship – employee and employer and couple, now, as well. Was it going to be a problem, in the long run? Harry had never thought it would be, but then he had never thought many things would happen.

Eventually, Ruth had pushed through the stiffness of the moment and kissed him gently. Adrenaline and endorphins had taken over, after that, and made everything right again. It was still early days, Harry reminded himself, now. They were still so new. He should not expect everything to be easy, right away. They needed time to get their bearings.

That said, Harry had absolutely no desire to slow things down between them, especially not after what Ruth had asked of him, earlier. She had invited him over to her house – Ruth had invited him to her house, he still had trouble believing that – and whether it was for dinner, or coffee, or more, Harry would be there. The cautious part of his brain was telling him not to lay too much on what might happen. The base, primal part of him, however, was crying out for contact. And she had lust in her eyes when she looked at him, earlier, Harry reminded himself. You are not alone in this. She wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her.

She wanted him.

It took a lot of will power to focus his mind away from Ruth again and onto the current situation. This was work time and he had to be on top of his game. He was meeting with the Home Secretary and Neilson. He was supposed to be having a conversation...

He brought his mind around, just in time to catch the end of his counterpart's sentence.

"...honestly say, I didn't expect to ever see you again," Neilson exclaimed, with a smile. Still talking about Albany, then, thought Harry with a sigh. Would it ever grow old? Neilson pushed blithely on. "From treason, to garden leave, yet here you are."

"Here I am," Harry echoed.

"It will be fifteen years you've held your current post, soon, won't it, Sir Harry? Has anyone else lasted so long, in the job?"

_No_.

"They're all saying you're indestructible!"

"Just hard wearing," Harry replied, curtly.

Neilson gave a short laugh.

"Not many men have the friends to weather such a storm as you did."

"As you said, I've been around for a while." Harry appraised the man on front of him, deciding to move the conversation onto a subject less emotionally-charged. He could feel Ruth shifting uncomfortably behind him. "I must say, Richard, you're looking remarkably slimmer than the last time we met," he noted, nodding towards Neilson's waistline. "You haven't gone over to the dark side and taken up golf, have you? Not out putting with the politicians?"

For a brief moment, a shadow passed over the man's eyes and his upper lip tightened. Then, he forced another languid smile and leant back in his chair, giving a slow nod.

"Atkins diet, I'm afraid. The wife has me on it. She's a terrifying woman, when she sets her mind to something – I daren't come off."

Harry instinctively doubted that Neilson's story was the truth. When a man such as his counterpart changed from a pattern he had held for most of his adult life, the natural assumption for a spook was that that man had suffered a change of circumstances; a family death, a break-up, a new mistress, perhaps. It was all leverage, in their line of work, so when he had first heard of Neilson's rapidly diminishing waistline, Harry had seized upon the subject with glee. After a couple of weeks of searching, however, Neilson's change of change of circumstances was none the more apparent and Harry had run out of avenues to pursue. There were no additional hints today.

The two spooks watched each other warily for a moment longer, then Harry turned his attention back Erin and Ruth. He introduced them politely to Neilson, paying particular attention to Neilson's reaction to Ruth's name. There was not much, to be honest. The man had a poker face like a marble statue. After nodding to the two women, he introduced the two he had brought – a 'Smith' and a 'Brown'. The irony of them having the two most common English surnames was not lost on Harry.

Once the introductions were finished, Harry took up a seat opposite Neilson at the table, Erin and Ruth sitting either side of him.

A few awkward moments passed in silence.

Over the years, Harry and Neilson had come to grudgingly respect one another, but there certainly was no love lost between them. Even before they had been direct counterparts, things had always been strained. They might have come up, through training, together, but they played the game on different levels, for different masters, for a long time. It had put them up against one another more than once and, because of that, they were never likely to be more than civil to one another. Conversation, therefore, was stilted and limited to the obligatory and work-related. Thankfully, however, the silence did not last long enough to provoke small talk – a pastime Harry was rather ill equipped for. With a bang and a clatter, the Home Secretary pushed his way in, through the door, followed by his entourage. The assembled spooks turned to face him.

Despite the earliness of the hour, the Home Secretary looked full of wrath. By his dishevelled appearance Harry guessed he had been at the Home Office for several hours already, if he had indeed been home at all last night. His shirt was wrinkled, his tie slightly askew. His forehead was furrowed deeply, too, as he strode into the room.

"Buggering fool wouldn't have had the first clue what was going on if we hadn't told him," he growled at a young man trotting at his side. The man had impossibly coiffed hair and was dimly familiar to Harry. One of Towers' many aides and advisors – a police liaison, Harry thought, but wasn't sure. "You make sure you tell him that," Towers continued to snap, "and he can stuff his jurisdictional qualms, they are of no bloody use to either of us!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry caught Erin and Ruth exchange a glance. The subject of the Home Secretary's chagrin was something that they already knew about, then, Harry thought. Sometimes, he felt a little out of the loop only reading the synopses of current threats. Then again, he hardly had the time to learn all the cases that went through his section back-to-front. That was a job for the analysts on each of his teams. On Erin's team, that was Ruth's job.

Ruth knew more than him, he mused, briefly.

Though it had probably always been true, it felt suddenly more intimidating now that he was dating her.

Across the room, Towers young liaison bobbed his head and muttered a quiet 'yes sir' and darted back out the door from which he had come, his shoes clapping loudly off down the hall. Harry watched him go and then the rest, as Towers dismissed them with a wave of his hand. He waited until they were gone before heaving a sigh and turning to scan the room.

"Harry, Richard," he greeted each of them, in turn, nodding to the others. "Sorry about the wait."

He sounded genuinely apologetic.

Neilson nodded and made conciliatory replies about traffic being dreadful that time of morning, while Harry held his silence, not bothering to express faked belief in the Home Secretary's previous whereabouts. The receptionist may well have told them all that he was stuck in traffic but, in Harry's eyes, Towers had the look of a man who had just emerged from another meeting; presumably in the same building as they were in now, as he was not fresh-faced from the cold or carrying a coat. It was probably something with the Prime Minister, Harry figured. He knew that the PM was not currently as abroad, or as on holiday, as Downing Street had led the media to believe.

"Right," Towers gave a long sigh, looking terribly harassed as he flopped down into his chair. "I suppose we should get started." He turned to Harry. "What on earth are we going to do about Torrance Wood?"

Harry let out a low sigh.

Torrance Wood was a problem every bit as ridiculous as his name. British consul in Shanghai, he had returned to the country following an incident at the embassy two months ago involving a failed bombing, which resulted in no casualties but plenty of structural damage. Pending an investigation into the matter, by the very thorough (and, in Harry's opinion, unduly interested) Ministry of State Security, Wood and his family had been relocated back to London while some of his people remained in Shanghai to deal with proceedings.

None of this, in itself was any of Harry's business.

However, as the investigation finished up in the people's republic of China and Wood had been preparing to return, he had received a death threat, followed by another attempt on his life.

Now, that was Harry's business.

A threat against an official consul of the United Kingdom was tantamount to a threat against the country itself, or its sovereign, and it was Harry's job to identify and prevent whomever had made said threat from making any further. In Harry's humble opinion, as fifteen-year head of Counterterrorism, his team would be able to handle the matter just fine without Secret Service stooges sticking their noses in. Due to the sensitivity of the work Wood was doing across seas, however, the Foreign Secretary had obliged the Home Secretary to involve Neilson and the SIS. So here they were, far too early in the morning, sans coffee or anything pleasant to eat, cooperating in the name of Her Majesty's government. It was all a show of courtesy that Harry could have done without.

Erin smothered a yawn on his left and Ruth leant forwards slightly in her chair, folding her hands atop a copy of the report they had sent to Towers the previous night. It contained a security assessment on Wood and his family and a detailed account of all of his previous official dealings and any threats he had received for them, in the past. Known anti-British activists of the Shanghai area were also included. The list was very short and each candidate was, in Harry's opinion, as unlikely to try to kill Torrance Wood as the next. If the Section Head had to lay money on the real attempted assassin, he would put it on a mercenary, hired by the oil consortium Wood was about to put out of business, with his renewable energy deal. A cheap mercenary, if the botched bombing was anything to go by.

"What to do with Torrance Wood..." Harry mused aloud.

Towers sighed again. "As if we don't have enough on our plate, with the preparations for the summit next week."

"We could always send him back to China," Neilson suggested, with a light shrug. "That would eliminate the need for your involvement, Harry." He turned to Towers, then, and continued. "I know the Chief is only too happy to assign more officers to the case on our end. Let the SIS work alongside the MSS on this one."

If Neilson had thought to tempt them with that, then he was more of an idiot than the Harry had thought.

"And miss the pleasure of your company, Richard? I don't think so. No," he turned to the Home Secretary, "we already have a new security plan outlined for Mr Wood. If we can collate information on the attack in Shanghai, including details on what Wood was working on prior to it, then I am confident we will be able to make a thorough threat assessment. Once we identify the attempted assassin, we can identify who he was paid by and put a stop to this."

"All the information from us and Six will be in the brief I sent you, ten minutes ago," Towers told him, smothering a yawn. "I'm afraid I'm rather short on analysts, so ours is a bit of a mess. Richard's is organised in your usual format."

Harry swung his gaze to Neilson, who was watching them from across the table.

"And is your offering comprehensive, Richard?" he asked.

Neilson's expression did not shift, but Harry thought he spotted a flicker in his eye. Laughter, perhaps, if men such as Richard Neilson ever truly laughed. "Of course, Harry," he replied, softly. "What on earth do you take this for, if not full cooperation?"

A veiled attempt at diplomacy, Harry bitterly suggested, to himself – a laying down of bait, to distract, while Neilson slunk off to fuck them all from behind. God knows what this was, but it was not full disclosure. Men like Richard Neilson did not do full disclosure. Harry knew that because he _was_ a man like Richard Neilson. They were creatures of shadows, living in a world made up of a thousand shades of grey. There was no black and white here, no absolute truth. Official Military Intelligence policy was that the two services were open to one another, sharing all relevant information upon a request with the correct clearance. The reality of the situation was, of course, slightly different.

Certain intelligence was held back by both parties and for good reason, thought Harry. It was the failing of intelligence services the world over that they had to employ a vast number of personnel. That meant that they had to factor human error and human corruptibility into every decision they made. Information was held close, even within each individual service. Sharing across services had to be approached very tentatively.

Harry knew that Neilson had not given them all the details of what Consul Torrance Wood was working on because _he_ wouldn't have, in Neilson's position. Forging delicate deals with flighty allies was a tricky business. Neilson would want as few people to know as possible and the chances of such details leaking out would increase exponentially once they were added to the MI5 mainframe.

"I need a run-down of what deals he was working on," Harry demanded, softly.

"That will all be in the file we sent you."

"I need details on any unofficial, preliminary talks that he is involved with, too."

Neilson gave a half-grimace.

"Not really a possibility, old boy," he drawled. "I'm afraid it would rather frighten off the other parties at the negotiating table, if we were to start rooting around in their private business before they had signed on any dotted lines."

"And having their negotiating partner blown to tiny pieces is not frightening?" Harry asked, politely.

Towers shot him a warning look, but he needn't have bothered. Far from take offence, Neilson looked mildly amused. A few moments passed, then a movement to their left caused all three men to turn slightly. Ruth was leaning forwards against the table, eyes bright.

"May I?" she asked him.

Harry hid his surprise and nodded for her to speak.

"Mr Neilson, we understand the need for discretion, but we need to know who he's working with – even tentatively working with." Her voice was soft, wonderfully soothing after the sharpness of Harry's, but still firm enough to echo loudly in the quiet of the cavernous meeting room. "I can assure you, I'll be working on this case personally, within a closed unit," she continued. "It would be just as easy to work with information transferred on hard disk, or paper."

_Eyes only_, Harry read in her words.

"There is no need to enter them into our system at all," his analyst finished, sounding most sincere. "And I can report updates on the case to your liaison, personally."

A moment passed, while Neilson regarded Ruth pensively. Then, he gave her a taut smile and nodded slowly in reply.

"Of course. We'll make the arrangements. Like I said to Harry, we support full cooperation."

Harry could have kissed his analyst on the spot.

It was the same deal he would have made, of course, but the way she had formed the offer was infinitely better. The haggling and snapping he had envisioned lasting the next twenty minutes, faded delightfully away in to the distance. She had always had a gift for smoothing ruffled feathers, thought Harry, hiding his smile beneath a fresh layer of impassivity. Erin Watts was an excellent Section Chief – she was fearless in the field and adhered so closely to protocol that sometimes Harry had to drag her away from it, kicking and screaming – but she had nothing of Ruth's natural talent at the negotiation table. Perhaps that would come with years of experience, Harry thought to himself.

Though he still did not think of her as such, having known her since she joined, Ruth definitely qualified as an experienced spook. She had been on the team for nearly eight years, now, Harry reminded himself, far longer than most made it. And what an eight years it had been. Together, they had been through the best and worst days Harry had ever experienced, on the Grid. They had seen relief and victory and she had seen bone-crushing defeat and loss. And Ruth had been never less than brilliant, the whole time.

"I can have the information sent over, within the hour," Neilson told her, before turning back to Harry and the Home Secretary. "I do have a few requests, however."

Terms and conditions always hampered the efficiency of his team, but Harry nodded anyway.

They needed this information. They had a job to do.

.

The rest of the meeting was taken up with haggling, over the details of their new information share. As Harry had expected, Neilson had several requests to be met, in return for his cooperation. Among other things, he required that they report back their findings twice a day to a member of his staff, in person.

In the course of negotiations, Harry learned that Six were running their own investigation into the failed bombing at the embassy and was assured that he and his team would be fully apprised of the relevant information. The phrase 'relevant information' made him shift uncomfortably in his seat, but he held his tongue on the matter. That was a bridge to be crossed at another time. Right now, they had managed to convince Neilson to share what the Consul had been up to, in Shanghai. That information would prove very valuable. Whomever had been making threats towards Wood in this country, had no doubt had quarrel with him in China. A couple cross-checks and conversations with assets abroad and they would know who wanted Wood dead and, therefore, be able to figure out a way to stop them. Harry almost smiled to himself. The meeting had gone smoother than he could have hoped.

Terms negotiated, everyone shook hands and Erin and Harry made their way over to the door with the Home Secretary as Ruth ran through some last-minute details for the file exchange with Neilson and his colleagues. Harry was perfectly happy to leave them to it. The less he had to interact with the SIS man, the happier he would be. He continued to watch them, however, until the Home Secretary touched him lightly on the arm, requiring his attention.

"I have you meeting with Torrance Wood tomorrow," Towers told him. "Half ten. I hope you will be able to shed some light on the situation, by then?"

Harry nodded, lifting his eyes off of where Ruth was haggling over the use of one of Neilson's assets and turning back to the man on front of him. Standing again, Towers looked even more woebegone than he had looked at the table. His Saville Row suit was wrinkled and he was a couple hours short of having stubble. Long night, Harry thought, wondering what horrors he might have to look forwards to, over the next few days. Politicians rarely pulled all-nighters unless there was something particularly important going down. And particularly important meant particularly spectacular, when it all went wrong. And when it all went wrong, guess who was called.

"My team will have a succinct threat assessment," Harry assured Towers, with a sigh. Hopefully whatever he was up to would manage not to go up in flames until after dinner with Ruth. Maybe even after Harry had had a few days off. He could really do with a break. Get some sleep, get some perspective. "Miss Evershed's preliminary has given us plenty of avenues to pursue," he continued.

"There is also an asset I'm pursuing who claims to have information on the matter," Erin offered, from the side. "She sounds promising."

Towers nodded, looked a little encouraged by this. There was nothing those outside the business liked better than a good asset, thought Harry. Chances were, Erin's would turn out to be nothing. Still, it was worth a shot and if it perked the Home Secretary up a little it couldn't be all bad news.

"We'll have something," Harry confirmed.

"Good, good." Towers shuffled his feet a little and straightened his tie. "God knows the death of a government minister, at a foreign militant's hand, is the last thing we need before a multicultural bonanza like the one we are hosting, this summer."

Harry thought it was a little much, hoping that there were no cultural clashes between now and the Olympics, but he decided not to say. Towers looked like he needed his hopes to hold onto, right now. Sending Erin on ahead – to obtain their driver and work out the details of their meeting with Wood, tomorrow, with Towers' secretary – Harry was about to go and rescue Ruth from Neilson's clutches, when the Home Secretary quietly caught his attention, again.

"Harry, could I have a quick word?"

Harry turned his head, one eyebrow raised.

"It's about Ruth Evershed," Towers said, quietly.

If there ever were four words to strike fear into Harry's heart, it was those four. Albany was the first thing that flashed through his mind, accompanied by a rush of confusion, as Towers had helped him out on the Albany matter – even if only to return and battle with the Gavriks. That was all over, now. Surely Towers was not going to use that help against him? Leverage did not seem to be his style – politician or not.

"What sort of word?" Harry asked, trying not to sound too defensive.

The Home Secretary looked fleetingly sympathetic. Then he shook his head. "Not that kind," he assured Harry, then heaved a sigh and continued. "I need a translator, for a meeting with an ambassador from Shanghai. He's come over to discuss the embassy fiasco. No one was injured, but these things can cause a lot of tension, you know..."

Harry nodded. He knew. Better than most.

"Anyway," Towers continued. "I was wondering if it would be possible to borrow her for the afternoon. I need someone familiar with the case, capable of analysis, who speaks Wu and Mandarin. From the report filed at your trial, her analysis skills seem more than satisfactory."

"She's very good," Harry agreed, trying not to let the lump in his throat rise any further and turn his voice nervous.

The thought of the Home Secretary 'borrowing' Ruth brought a strange mix of feelings to light; predominantly jealousy, rich and irrational. Towers' interest was purely professional, Harry knew. He needed a translator who could function as an analyst and he knew Ruth to be useful and trustworthy. Logically, it made sense. That, however, did not stop a strange refrain from rushing through Harry's mind at the thought of her being parted from his side. Ruth was his; he was her boss, her sort-of partner and they belonged solely to each other. It was the sort of primal, possessive rhetoric that he could never share aloud with anyone, most of all Ruth. It was illogical, but no less potent.

"I can ask her, then?" Towers enquired, somewhat delicately. "Your team can cope without her, for the day?"

He sounded as if he were treading on eggshells.

"Of course," Harry replied, with forced nonchalance. Best he did not reveal just how nervous he was about anyone parting him from his analyst. It would draw the wrong sort of attention. "I'll make sure to have Erin free up her schedule, on our end. The rest of the team can pick up the slack. I'll need her back if there is an immediate threat, of course," he added, as if work was foremost among his thoughts.

Towers looked very slightly surprised, as if he were expecting a different answer.

"Good. Well that's settled then."

Ruth chose that moment to appear at Harry's shoulder, chin lifted, eyes large and unabashedly interested in what they had been talking about.

"Hello," she greeted them, a little breathlessly.

So new to all of this, Harry thought, giving her a fleeting smile. She had only been at a few of these meetings, during her time with him. Quite contrary to what he would have expected, she was enjoying it.

"Ruth, if you don't mind, William needs you for a moment," he said, nodding to Towers.

Covering her surprise with a polite 'of course', Ruth turned to the Home Secretary.

Harry decided to leave them to it. Muttering something about going to find Erin, he picked his feet up from the carpet and forced them to carry him out through the door that his Section Chief had left ajar. The corridor beyond it took him gladly, his footsteps sounding loudly off the hard floor and high ceilings. Their sound was soon lost amongst the dozens of other footsteps. Aides and administrators strode hurriedly up and down, no doubt preparing for the onslaught of another day in the Home Office. Harry spotted few politicians amongst them. Then again, he reasoned, it was very early in the morning. Most of the politicians he knew did not roll up to work until past nine.

Harry took a couple of paces down the corridor, then pulled up against the wall and took his phone from his pocket, pretending to scroll through his messages as he waited for Ruth to finish up inside.

She took longer than expected. By the time she emerged, Neilson and his colleagues had already passed and Harry had had to endure their farewell, plus greetings from a number of Home Secretary's rather over-enthusiastic junior staff. The curse of being in the Home Office every other day was notoriety. As a man who had spent a large proportion of his life trying to stop people from finding out his name, Harry found it mildly disconcerting. He was just considering heading downstairs, to lurk with Erin in the car, when the meeting room door opening and Towers' voice turned his head.

"I look forwards to hearing from you, then. See you tomorrow," his voice grew closer, then both the Home Secretary and Ruth emerged from beyond it. "Good luck with the case," Towers nodded to Ruth, and clasped her hand in a shake which lasted – in Harry's opinion – just a moment too long. Glancing up, then, he noticed Harry standing there and nodded. "Harry."

On reflex, Harry nodded back. Before he had a chance to say anything, however, Towers turned on his heel and strode off in the opposite direction down the corridor, towards his office. A young aide who had been loitering near the receptionist's desk picked up his feet and tore after him, proffering a file in one outstretched hand. Harry dimly heard Towers swear, then they both turned the corner and were lost to the general hubbub of the building.

Harry turned his attention back to Ruth, who was watching him from the meeting room doorway.

A strange tightening spread across his skin and he was suddenly and very acutely aware of her gaze. Was it okay that he had waited? Not once, he realised, with a jolt, had he considered if she would want him to wait. Not once had he considered if that might look a little patronising to do so. Now that she was watching him, however, it seemed a very obvious possibility. Thankfully, however, after about five seconds of careful attention, Ruth gave a tiny smile and started forwards. Breathing a sigh of relief, Harry turned and fell into step beside her, stowing his phone once more in his pocket.

"Anything wrong?" she asked, as they approached the staircase. "You were looking at your phone."

Harry shook his head. "Nothing yet. All calm on the western front."

"Good."

They stood and watched each other for a few heartbeats.

Then,

"You waited," his clever analyst stated, softly.

"Yes," Harry replied. Because I'm an over-jealous, over-protective idiot, he added, inside his head. He could not say that, though. It was what she was worried about, why she had avoided their relationship for so long. He couldn't give her cause for concern, now, not after they had come so far. He could not watch her walk away again. Losing her would kill him. "I prefer backup, when walking through the lion's den," he joked, instead, trying to lighten the mood with humour.

It sort of worked. When Ruth glanced up at him, there was laughter in her eyes, but she did not let it reach her lips. Instead, she bit at the inside of her lower one and quickly refocused her eyes back downwards, at their walking feet.

They continued along for almost half a minute before Harry could bring himself to say anything else.

"If you're worried about what the Home Secretary will think, don't bother. He already knows," he told her, in an almost-whisper. Nobody walking by was listening into their conversation, but it was hardly a topic that his lady would feel comfortable discussing in public.

Indeed, she looked a little frightened when the words left his mouth.

"Knows about...?"

"Us," Harry confirmed. "Not the fact that we're seeing each other," he elaborated, when Ruth frowned slightly, "or that I'm madly in love with you, just that we have history." Not quite how he had intended to word it, Harry grimaced internally, but the point was across.

Ruth's eyes widened slightly.

Harry's heart trilled faster.

How was it, he wondered, that a man holding a gun to his head could not shake him, but the shifting nuances of Ruth's beautiful face could send him into near cardiac arrest? Surely this wasn't right? Surely he was stronger than this? He was Harry Pearce, for God's sake! Half the men who walked these halls were scared of him. He had a reputation. He had been spying and killing and influencing foreign government agenda for more than twenty years. He was the boss spook, he told himself, get a grip...

The problem with that, of course, was that he did not really _want_ to get a grip. The idea of laying himself down for her, letting his heartbeat race as her eyes flashed, was growing more appealing with each passing second. Taking a steadying breath, Harry cleared his throat and realised that they had come to an almost-halt, half-turned to face each other in the wide hall.

"Erin will be waiting, with the car," he told her, softly, nodding in the direction of the exit. "Shall we?"

His analyst looked like she might not be able to reply, so he took her silence for acquiescence and set off again. After a few paces, Harry heard her footsteps and he breathed a sigh of relief as Ruth's footsteps sounded loudly on the floor and she caught back up with him, choosing to walk alongside rather than half a pace behind. For the rest of the corridor, she did not say anything. As they reached the end, however, and Harry held the door to the stairwell open, she paused just on front of his outstretched arm. Inches away, she lifted her eyes to meet his and all Harry could see was love there – no blame, no discomfort.

"Thank you," she murmured softly. Her fingers brushed across his hand as she made her way through the door. Curling them around his thumb, they gave him a brief, gentle squeeze then were gone again – her touch so light that Harry could have almost imagined it.

Her heels clicked loudly against the stone floor as she walked away.

Taking a steadying breath, Harry let go of the door and followed her. All the way down the staircase and out the building, he hoped desperately that their problem with Torrance Wood was one which would be easily solved. An oil deal, gone awry, he suggested to himself, or an old grudge from his life before politics – nothing which would cause him to miss dinner with Ruth. If he made it through until tonight, he pledged, he would never complain about being woken at six am again. He would happily work for a month straight, if the gods could spare him just this one night without terrorism. Just one, he sighed, it was not a lot to ask, surely?

As they crossed the great entrance hall to the building, Harry sped up to walk beside her and they reached the door together.

Erin was waiting, face grim.

"Problems on the Grid," she told Harry, sharply.

"One a scale of one to ten?"

Erin frowned. "We've had worse," she shrugged. "Semtex discovered during a raid in Brixton."

Harry sighed. Sometimes he missed Ros Myers, with her ability to put a succinct number on chaos.

"I suppose we'd better get going, then."

Ruth began tapping something into her phone. "I'll call ahead," she murmured, absently. "I have an open file on a explosives threat, which I was working up with Calum. GCHQ intercepted chatter on a possible sale, last week. Could be related."

Harry glanced sideways at her, as they got into the car. How she kept so much information inside her head was completely beyond him. As was why on earth was he thinking of loaning her to Towers. How was he possibly going to survive a whole afternoon without her? He held his silence, as Ruth made her call and the driver pulled out from the curb. Erin in the front seat was on the phone too. Traffic was hectic. It would be more than twenty minutes across to Thames House. Plenty of time, thought Harry, to banish lewd thoughts on his analyst and replace them with good sensible thoughts, about men with bombs and would-be assassins.

Staring out the window, the Section Head gave a little sigh.

What a life they led...

.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N - Thank you for all of the wonderful reviews! H__ope you all enjoy ch5 and 6. _

_-Silver._

_._

_Chapter 5 – A very hard life_

.

If she had not been a veteran member of Grid personnel, Ruth expected she would have spent most of the day in a state of mild distress. The sheer amount of work waiting for her, when she arrived, was atrocious. As the day unfolded and they received more information on the Semtex threat in Brixton, the piles on her desk grew steadily higher and her system filled up with requests. Ruth did not bother with complaining. This happened on an almost daily basis and she was used to it. It was her role, here, to wade through the swamp of information, collecting all the relevant details. It was her role to gather all the little bits together and explain it to those who had to make decisions, based upon it. It was her role and she was nothing if not diligent in it.

She worked through lunch and into the early afternoon, doggedly ignoring the growing pangs of her hunger in her stomach and the aching in her lower back, from not getting up to stretch her legs. Slowly, she picked away at the lists of requests, interpreting the screeds of (mostly useless) information and sending it on to the relevant authorities. By half past five, she was well and truly ready to call it a day. Just as she was considering calling it a day – heading home, to work herself into a nervous wreck in preparation for dinner with Harry – Calum Reid appeared at her shoulder, carrying a handful of files and wearing a petted lip.

"Morning..." he greeted her, dejectedly.

"It's afternoon," Ruth glanced up at the clock then went back to her report. "Actually, it's evening and has been for a while."

"Oh," he heaved a melodramatic sigh. "You can't really tell in here, can you?"

A few seconds passed, then Ruth gathered up all of her remaining patience and asked. "What's wrong?"

This was the other aspect of her role, she thought, with a wry smile. Veteran member of the team, senior analyst and mother figure to younger spooks. Ruth did not mind, not really, but she felt a stir of annoyance that her colleague had chosen now to seek her out. She was almost done for the day. Five more minutes and she would have been out here. Across the way, Calum grabbed hold of Dimitri's abandoned swivel chair and pulled it across to Ruth's station, dropping down into it.

"Harry's a sadist," he complained.

Ruth clicked a few boxes, starting her final cross-check search of law enforcement databases. "Well, we all have our little foibles," she murmured, not looking up.

To her side, Calum sighed again.

"Do you think it's fair that Dimitri spends twice as much time in the field as I do?"

"I think he's ex-navy and, therefore, has more field training," Ruth answered, diplomatically, translating three lines of Arabic from a threat assessment and inserting them into the appropriate box. Then, pressing print, she leant back in her chair, turning to face her colleague.

Calum was one of the older young spooks. Well into his thirties, he could not really be more than fix or six years her junior. Still, more often than not, it was him she was required to mother. His paperwork was atrocious, his telephone manner was dire and he had a penchant for sarcasm which rubbed his superiors up the wrong way. His instincts and his conduct in the field, however, Ruth could not fault. He was somewhat impulsive, admittedly, and occasionally he questioned orders– but only if he was certain that he had a better way of doing things. He was a good officer. Ruth would trust him with her life. Harry's reasons for not using him more often, therefore, remained a mystery.

"You did fail your firearms re-qualifications," she suggested.

"Yes, but I can resit them in two weeks," Calum exclaimed, with mild exasperation. "I don't see what the problem is!"

"He probably just doesn't want you out there unarmed."

"He's had me stuck in here for the past few weeks – long before I failed. In fact," he gesticulated, with one manila folder, "I'm willing to bet that I failed because I've been stuck in here, wasting my skills away. I don't think I've actually held a firearm in over six months!"

Surely that was a good thing, Ruth thought, but did not say. She suspected this was one of those male things that she would never understand, like the need to drive and the inability to ask for directions when lost during said driving.

Men confused her. It was not that she was naive, far from it, in fact. She had dated often and with great enjoyment since she was in her teens. She knew men, knew what to expect and how to act, but she had no idea of what went on in their minds. To prevent this from becoming a problem, she usually paired herself with men who kept their emotions well out in the open. Confidant, open men were easier to deal with. There were no secrets, no hidden intentions. This thing with Harry, she mused, was going to be nothing like that. Harry did not do open emotion. For the first year she had known him, in fact, Ruth had wondered if he did any emotion at all – apart from anger.

Breaking from her reverie, she looked back to Calum, still sulking across from her.

"Would you like some tea?" Ruth asked, soothingly. She was getting up anyway. Might as well give the boy a biscuit and shut him up.

It was not that she did not like Calum. She did, quite a lot, in fact. He was the only one of the new team who she had really bonded with. Tariq was sweet, but he was so young. Erin was slightly intimidating and Dimitri... well, Ruth was fairly sure that Dimitri was a robot. An action robot. They were all lovely people, of course, but she and Calum had grown closer than the rest because they had spent the most time together. While Erin and Dimitri jumped through windows and shot at things from moving vehicles, herself and Calum worked the vast swathes of intelligence which moved through their building. He was a good analyst, Ruth admitted, not as good as her, but good – just like he was in the field. Good, smart, cautious, instinctive, but not extraordinary, like Adam Carter or Lucas North had been.

The balance probably made him a little more stable, Ruth mused, as the man across from her nodded and agreed that he would, indeed, like some tea. More often than not, the new officers that joined them excelled in one area and were distinctly lacking in others. Calum was smart, a good all-rounder and a lovely guy, once you got over the sarcasm. He was, however, a terrible whiner.

"Milk and sugar?" she asked, pulling herself up from her seat.

"Yes, please," Calum yawned, flipping open the file he was carrying and grabbing a pen off of her desk, starting to mark down notes upon it.

Ruth disappeared off through to the where the kettle was kept and made up two cups of tea. She steeped her companions for a little less time than usual, deciding that the last thing Calum needed right now was more caffeine in his system. It would only increase his paranoia that Harry was out to get him. Unless, of course, Ruth reasoned as she added sugar, Harry was indeed out to get him. Then it technically wouldn't be paranoia. She couldn't think of a reason for Harry to wish the younger spook ill, however, and he really didn't have the time to mess with his head just for fun. She resolved to ask him, some time, why Calum was not being made use of, in the field.

Arriving back at the desk, the young officer declared her a goddess, the light of his life and love of his loins, as Ruth handed over the tea. "Any chance of a look at this?" he added, eventually handing over the file he had been carrying – the file Ruth assumed he had come to ask her about in the first place. "I think it's relevant but I've been working for too long. Words aren't making sense anymore."

Ruth nodded, taking the file.

It was a collection of scrawled notes, collected by the SIS from a deniable asset working on the ground in Shanghai. Halfway through the first page, Ruth began to frown. The asset claimed to know of a contract out on the British consul but, more interestingly, talked about locations for a hit to take place. They were meeting times and places that matched up with the security detail plans which Richard Neilson's people had assured her were secure. Ruth reached over to her computer and scrolled through her many tabs.

"Link?" Calum asked, leaning over and taking the file while she tapped away.

Ruth nodded. "Something... I saw... earlier..." She pulled up the transcript of an interview, with one of consul Torrance Wood's security guards, regarding the attempt made on his life at his home in London. "Security claimed that the assailant knew the shift change and the camera positions, despite some of them being hidden and newly installed the day before. Indicated inside information," she read out then turned back to Calum. "Police disregarded that part as another guard said they were installed by a public company. They deduced the information leak could have come from their end. But..."

"...If there was a security leak in Shanghai as well, then the leak had to come from the security men Wood brought with him," Calum nodded. "Thank you, Ruth," he sighed, heavily. Clearly the connection was one he was half way to making, but for the sheer exhaustion. Ruth knew he had been working last night. Two shifts in a row was not enjoyable experience. "I'll look into it."

Giving her colleague an encouraging smile, Ruth folded the bits of paper back inside the folder and handed it over.

"Good luck,"

She had been put onto another aspect of the case, investigating Wood's business dealings both here and abroad. Harry had put her on it specifically before disappearing into his office, muttering darkly about a phone call and Richard Neilson. He was still there now, Ruth noted, glancing over at the long glass wall, though not on the phone any longer.

"Ruth?" Calum's voice brought her back around to reality.

"Hm?"

"Would you like to get a drink? I have an hour or so of work left to do, but the pub sounds like a good idea, after. I think I need something to relax me, after the last week."

For a split second, Ruth wondered what sort of drink he was asking her for. Then, reading the tired expression on the younger man's face, the general air of self-pity, she realised he just wanted some company and someone to rant at.

"I'm busy, actually," she said apologetically. "I have an old friend coming over, for tea." Technically, it was not a lie. Harry was an old friend. And he was coming over. And her intentions were very far from platonic, but Calum did not need to know that any more than he needed to know that they had had coffee that morning.

The young officer looked a little put out, by her response.

"Oh. Well, I suppose I'll just have to ask Dimitri and Erin, instead." He sighed. "I could drag Tariq along," he continued, voice growing slightly fed up, "make it a double date."

Ruth tried her best to look reproachful. Erin and Dimitri had their fair share of sexual tension but, so far, she was unaware of it having culminated in anything. That said, they were both very good field spooks. Ruth doubted she would hear about any relationship they did have until it was well established – unlike her and Harry, Ruth thought. It felt odd, to Ruth, considering herself and Harry as a couple – especially when she was not entirely sure that they constituted a couple, yet. They were getting there, she reasoned. One week on and they had barely got beyond holding hands, but at least they were moving forwards, now. That was something that they had not been doing for years.

The others must know, she told herself. Calum, Tariq and Dimitri had seen them both go up to the roof, on New Year's Eve, and it was hard to pretend nothing had happened up there. She and Harry were talking again, for one thing. For another, they had each stopped asking other members of the team to relay messages to the other. The team must have caught on, by now. They were spooks, after all.

"No girlfriend in your life then, currently?" she asked, bringing the subject back around to double dates, trying to push her thoughts away from Harry. What with what she had asked him, this morning, she could have easily spent the whole day fretting about the evening. Keeping things current was the only way of keeping herself sane.

Calum stopped rubbing his palms over his forehead and raised an eyebrow at her.

"No gentlemen in yours?"

Ruth felt her cheeks redden and realised, instantly, she had probably pressed a little too far. She gave a little bob of her head.

"Sorry," she excused. "I was being nosy."

A smile twitched Calum's lips, then he sighed.

"Oh, s'okay. There's not, though, to answer your question. I don't have enough time to spend on myself, never mind someone else."

Ruth was on the verge of saying something sage about time and priorities, but managed to pull herself back. Just because she and Harry were finally moving forwards did not mean that she could offer wise relationship advice. They had, after all, been utterly hopeless for the best part of the last decade. And, she pointed out to herself, they may well continue to be hopeless, just at a slightly more advanced stage. Coffee that morning had been better than she could have imagined and he had readily accepted her offer to come over for dinner (and possibly more), but there were infinite things which could go wrong, once in the confines of her home, Ruth realised. And it was a situation from which she could hardly flee, being the owner of the property.

Shifting in her seat, she tried to push that from her mind.

"Do you want me to run through anything else for you?" she asked Calum.

Calum shook his head. "Best get back to it. Thanks for that, though."

"Any time," she smiled. He looked a little rejuvenated, after his cup of tea, but still weary. "You should go home, soon, get some sleep."

The young officer nodded and mumbled that he had tomorrow off, before standing and pushing Dimitri's chair back to its station.

"Night, Ruth," he called as he sloped away. "I'll see you on Thursday, bright and blindingly early."

"Good night," she replied, with a smile.

It sounded like it was a very hard life, being Calum Reid.

.

Twenty minutes saw her done with all that she could finish for the day. Thirty-eight unread tasks sat in her inbox but none were flagged as a priority and Ruth knew that if she waited until her in-tray was empty before leaving, she would never get home. Logging off the system, she greeted Erin and Dimitri who were returning from an after-noon long meet with an asset. Erin looked exhilarated, gesticulating wildly. Dimitri was staring with intense fascination into her eyes as she talked. They barely registered Ruth's wave enough to smile in reply before bustling past together, completely absorbed in their conversation and each other.

Perhaps Calum was right, she mused. Erin and Dimitri did act like a couple, sometimes. Ruth wondered if her and Harry had been so obvious, in those early years where they were only just discovering their strange sexual tension. Probably, she reasoned. They had spent a great deal of time gazing into each other's eyes.

Leaving the maybe-couple to their business, Ruth turned and began to tidy up her station. Files went into piles. Restricted files went back to archives. Pens and paperclips went back into a box and she all the other various items she had brought, from home, went back into her bag. Slinging her coat over her arm, she stood, looking about herself for a moment. Her gaze rose, drawn irreversibly towards Harry's office and the man himself, inside it. He was still there, one hand cradling his head, frowning down at his the report on front of him. The frown threw up wrinkles across his forehead, softening his features in the half light of his office, and Ruth felt a strangely possessive warmth stir inside of her. She was not so sure that she was allowed to feel possessive of him, this early in their relationship, but that as certainly how she felt; possessive, proud and slightly hungry. To her, he was beautiful.

Taking a moment to gather herself, she turned and headed down the corridor towards him. She saw him glance up, through the glass window, as she approached. The door was partly open when she arrived and Ruth reasoned that there was no point in knocking. She never had done and, besides, he had seen her coming. She popped her head around the edge instead, giving a short clear of her throat, to signal her arrival.

"That's me off," she told him, with a tiny smile.

Harry looked up from his desk.

The table on front of him was strewn with paper. To his left hand side, Ruth could see a stack of personnel files. On his right was the report on Torrance Wood that she had prepared yesterday, along with several other files relevant to the case. A pen sat amongst them and an empty glass tumbler atop the pile on the left. Ruth would be willing to bet that the liquid which had been inside it had been amber and strongly alcoholic.

"Do you need anything else, before I go?" she asked.

Harry shook his head.

"No, I have your profile on Assad and your assessment of that Brixton business..." her boss yawned widely. "You should leave now, before the next shift arrive. If they figure out that you know what you're doing, it might be next week before you can get away."

Ruth felt her smile curl a little wider.

"I'll try that."

"Run fast," Harry advised, "the next few days are not going to be pleasant."

Ruth grimaced.

"I feel a little rotten for leaving you all to it," she admitted. "I know it's going to get swamped. I'm in tomorrow evening," she added, suddenly remembering, "to do my debrief after this meeting with the Home Secretary. "If you need another analyst, you can always pull me back in."

Harry sighed. "It's nothing we can't handle, Ruth, just savour your days off." He stretched back, in his chair, looking incredibly weary. Ruth's heart went out to him. "I made the mistake of working weekends to try and clear my in-tray, in my first year in this job," he admitted. "It was awful. No matter how many cases we closed, it was never over. Circumstances conspired, plots unravelled. I once went three weeks without managing to have a weekend."

She hid a smile.

"Sounds like what Calum's doing, right now. Although, I think he's working nights, too."

Harry gave a mild eye-roll.

"Idiot."

"Don't be too hard on him," Ruth admonished, but only softly. Harry was the boss, here, she didn't want to make it sound like she was telling him how to run his own department. "He's trying and he's a good officer... if a little enthusiastic." She considered asking him why he had restricted Calum to the Grid, but decided against it. It felt a bit too much like meddling.

Her boss let out a very weary sigh.

They stood and sat, watching each other for a few seconds – Ruth considering her maternal role, within the team, and Harry's slightly paternal one. Perhaps they had never really chosen to fall in love with one another. Perhaps it was like the eighteenth century arranged marriages that she had read about, in her literary classes, at University. They had been shoved into a situation where they both had to care for a family (because the team constituted a family, whatever anyone said) and, over time, they had forged a bond over it. They had fostered little spooks together, raised them together, mourned them together when they died. It was a very strange thought, Ruth mused, watching Harry's eyes flash amber in the lamplight.

"Well, I'll see you later, then?" she asked, softly.

Suddenly, Harry's expression shifted, the tired warmth fading away to reveal mild distress.

"What?" Ruth asked, quickly, her own face falling too.

"Shit. I just remembered," he grimaced, raising one hand and rubbing across his face with a groan. "I was going to finish this report for the Consul tomorrow morning, but I told the Home Secretary I would be in an emergency meeting with Ashburn at ten."

"Ashburn?" Ruth asked, softly.

Harry waved one hand, somewhat dismissively. "Joint venture with Six, all rather under the radar at the moment, but you'll find out about it soon enough."

And so it began, she thought, licking her lower lip – the secrets and joint ventures, the bombs and conspiracies, the work pulling them apart again. If Harry couldn't finish his report tomorrow, he was going to have to finish it tonight. He was going to have to work late. And that meant no dinner.

She gave what she hoped would be interpreted as an understanding nod.

"You have to work," she said, trying not to sound too disappointed.

"I do," he replied, looking utterly devastated. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," she told him, softly. "It's the job."

Harry gave a wretched smile.

"Sorry," he repeated.

This was what it was going to be like, Ruth sighed to herself, it shouldn't have surprised her. She had known, when she had decided to let them have a second chance, what the job entailed. They were officers bound in service to Queen and country and that meant that the job always came first. Before dinner, before love, before each other. They had to put it on a pedestal because it was more than a job. It was a duty. But _their_ duty, Ruth reminded herself, not just his.

She bit at the inside of her lip, an idea occurring.

"If you have all the documents you need, you could bring it over to mine."

"Ruth, you're supposed to be having a night off."

A little laugh escaped her throat. Days off did not have the same meaning, in their line of work. She was having the day off, tomorrow, but that had not stopped her from being volunteered to go and assist the Home Secretary in a meeting with a Chinese ambassador. Sure enough, the meeting would only last an hour or two, and the debrief less than half of that, but the inconvenience of having to leave her home made it count – to Ruth, at least – as work rather than rest. She did not say this, however. The Home Secretary's request for her had been specific and Harry could have hardly said no, even if he had remembered that she was supposed to be at home, tomorrow, (something Ruth doubted very much that he had remembered, at the time).

"You should bring it over," she told her boss, softly. "Honestly, I don't mind. Besides, we'll be done faster with the two of us."

Harry gave a little sigh.

"Dinner and a show, then..."

Ruth quirked a smile back at him.

It was not the evening they had both imagined, but it was an evening together rather than alone and that had to be preferable.

"Okay," he looked back down at the desk and its files, nodding. "Sounds good."

"Good," Ruth replied, body tight with anticipation.

She quite fancied crossing the room and kissing him but it was just far too public a location, for all of that. Glancing over at the window, Ruth saw Dimitri and Erin nearby, on the Grid, discussing something on a surveillance screen. Over in the technical suite, Tariq was pulling on a coat and plugging in earphones, presumably for the journey home. A sensible idea, thought Ruth. The youngest member of their team had been yawning more or less constantly for the past couple of hours. He needed to get some sleep. Calum Reid needed the same but, Ruth noticed, he was still holed up at his station, face bathed in the blue glow of his computer screen. He was turning into something of a zealot, thought the analyst with a weary sigh. He would have been on Grid for thirty six hours, by the end of shift.

Tapping the wall of Harry's office with her fingertips, she turned back to her boss, giving him another smile.

"Right, I'll see you later, then?"

"Seven," Harry confirmed.

"Okay."

Her stomach clenched within her, heart thundering in her chest. God, she was nervous. She could not remember the last time she had been this nervous, in fact, but it was nervous in a good way. Exhilaration, perhaps, was a better word for it, Ruth corrected. They were so close to being close. They had finally managed to compromise and make time for themselves, amongst the chaos. This was a huge milestone, in their so-far rather tragic story. They had never managed compromise, before, not in the personal aspect of their life anyways.

Silence reigned over them for a few seconds and Ruth toyed with the idea of saying something else, before deciding against it. She was not comfortable talking 'them', within the walls of Thames House and there was nothing left to say, about work, that would not be repetition. Usually, at this point, Harry could come in with something suitably neutral for them to discuss, such as Dimitri Levendis or the weather, but not this time. After half a minute, he was still watching her intently. Eventually, Ruth decided enough was enough and bid him goodnight – only to remember that he was coming over, later, and she really did not have to bid him goodnight.

She apologised. Then blushed vibrantly, as Harry smilingly told her not to. Then apologised again.

Her boss let out a half chuckle at her distress.

Caught somewhere between annoyance and the desire to cross the room and stick her tongue down his throat, Ruth turned tail, murmuring something about seeing him later, and skulked out of the building. She chanced a glance back at Harry's glass office wall as she was exiting the security doors. He was still watching her, eyes alive with barely disguised amusement. If anyone were watching the pair of them, Ruth thought to herself, there would be no doubt as to their shift in relationship, now. Harry should keep his eyes to himself and his expressions better in check, she thought. Still, she could not find it in herself to be annoyed at him for long.

By the time the lift deposited her, on the ground floor, a smile had snaked across her lips. What would the people passing her in the corridor think, she wondered, if they knew who she was taking home tonight? It was a strange thought, because power had never been one of the lures that Harry held for her. Ruth would not deny that it thrilled her, just occasionally, to see him in action amongst his high-level counterparts, but it had never been the primary reason for her attraction. That was all to do with what lay beneath the veneer of control and power – the little bits he let slip over the years – the warmth in his voice when he gave a genuine laugh, the softness in his eyes when they fell on her across the Grid late at night. Others did not know that side to him. She did and would know it better, soon.

The people passing would think she was insane, Ruth told herself, with a soft sigh. Even a part of her own mind still thought her insane, to be honest. She was letting a man who was a liar, a killer, a philanderer and a spy into her bed. But it was Harry, she reasoned, softly. It was Harry and, whatever he had done in the past, she knew he was good. She loved him. And he loved her.

_He loved her. He loved her. He loved her._

The journey back home on the bus was uneventful. Ruth spent most of it lost in thought about the evening to come.

.


	6. Chapter 6

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_Chapter 6 – Sanctuary_

.

He arrived with the rain drumming down on his back and a bag clutched in either hand. The window into Ruth's living room was lit with a warm orange glow, awfully tempting when one was standing in the pouring rain, and even more tempting because Harry knew what waited for him inside.

Despite the gnawing hunger in his stomach, Harry would have been perfectly happy to throw the food he carried aside, in search of more physical sustenance. He wanted Ruth like he had never wanted anything before and, while he really wanted the first time they had sex to be slow and gentle and beautiful, part of him wondered if he would be able to hold off that long. Perhaps bringing work, tonight, was a good thing. It was a nice buffer, between dinner and what might (or might not, he forcefully reminded himself,) happen later. It gave them time to slow down and adjust to each other's company.

Both of his hands were full, so he chose the briefcase to set down on her doorstep, to ring her doorbell. The sound tinkled pleasantly through her hall, causing an uncharacteristic flash of nervous tension to fly up Harry's spine. He was on Ruth's doorstep. They were having dinner. This was the culmination of more than half a decade of awkward flirting around the idea of a relationship. Harry had to swallow back an impulse to laugh at the thought. Who, knowing him in his youth, would have thought he would have the patience to chase a woman for seven years?

Inside, Ruth's footsteps drove all thoughts from mind. Shifting around, he picked up the briefcase again and tried to look as if he was not about to have a coronary. A shadow passed over the door, Ruth's shadow, breaking the glow of orange light for a few seconds. Harry clutched the handle on his briefcase a little tighter. She did not pause to look through the peep hole at him for long, however. Almost as soon as her form had appeared, he heard the sliding of a bolt free from its place and the door handle turning. Then the dark, varnished wood opened inwards, without a noise, and she was standing on front of him.

"Hey," he was smiling, suddenly, quite without meaning to.

Ruth smiled back, the movement briefly lighting her eyes, though Harry could see that she was every bit as jittery as he was.

"You look-," he began then cut himself off.

She looked beautiful, she really did. She had clearly washed her hair sometime recently, because it was fluffier than usual, forming half curls half waves. It seemed a little darker, too, but that was probably just the contrast with her fair skin. She was wearing a pale blue t-shirt, under a shirt, and jeans – something Harry had never expected simply because he had never seen her wear. Mind you, he reasoned, she couldn't dress formally all the time. Even spooks had to let their hair down sometimes. He had been home, showered, shaved, changed his shirt, but he probably still looked like something which had been dragged out of a long day at the office. Ruth looked beautiful.

He fought the urge to tell her as much, however, because her cheeks had flushed a very faint pink when he had started to, last time.

"Come in?" she asked, softly, standing to the side of the doorway.

Yes. Always yes.

Harry stepped carefully up and past her, into the warmth of the porch. Ruth did not move back as he entered, letting him brush against the side of her as he went. Her head tilted back as they passed, eyes meeting, her smile growing slightly. She was beautiful and his. All his.

"I brought Chinese food," he told her, softly. "You said you didn't like Thai, which I took to mean you did like Chinese, otherwise you would not have made the distinction."

Ruth's smile stretched a little.

"Perceptive," she nodded.

"People have occasionally said so, yes."

A tiny laugh escaped her throat and she moved back, allowing him further into the corridor as she turned and closed the door behind them. Harry set the briefcase down under the rack of coats, handing the bag of food over to Ruth as she offered her hands out to receive it. Peeling off his own coat, he laid it over the rack at Ruth's instruction.

"I'm glad you're here," she admitted, as he did so, "I'm starving."

Running one hand over his wet hair, Harry tried to flatten it. It was a week or so short of needing a good cut and it made him look even shabbier. No matter, though, he told himself. Ruth had seen him worse. Ruth had seen him in the most desperate days of his life, three days on the Grid, two hours of sleep with his people dying around him. She had seen the worst of him too, in other ways. She had still asked him into her home and into her life. She was in this for all of him, shabbiness included.

Motioning for him to head through to the kitchen, Ruth murmured, "Make yourself at home".

Her eyes were gentle, body not quite as tense as Harry had expected it to be, given the somewhat virgin nature of their situation. Work and public places they were used to, but Ruth's house was an infinitely more intimate venue. Harry had never been invited into her space before, not without work looming over them. Though he carried his work along with him tonight – the ridiculous Wood report that he had to finish – this was almost a strictly personal visit. Dinner, getting to know each other, maybe more if he played his cards right and didn't say anything that made him look too much of an ass.

"Tea?" Ruth asked him, as they entered her small, warm kitchen.

Harry nodded.

"We can have something stronger, if you like?" she offered.

Harry shook his head. "Best not," he smiled. "If I drink anything right now it'll send me straight to sleep."

"Long day," Ruth nodded.

"It always is."

It had been a long day, but not a particularly difficult one, in the grand scheme of things. Finding Semtex, in a raid on Brixton, had been worrying but – by all appearances – they had caught it before anything terrible happened. Terror averted before the terror part, for once. The rest of the day had been somewhat routine. From start to finish, Harry had been inundated with phone calls, assessment requests and pointless meetings, but it had not developed into anything beyond the usual turmoil of a Sunday morning.

Harry was not overly fond of working Sundays. All the worst sorts of calamities seemed to happen on Sundays. Call him superstitious, but he always tried to avoid them when he could. Thursdays were Harry's favourite day to work. In all the years he had served in Section D, he could not remember one horrific thing starting on a Thursday – discounting thing which had started very late on a Wednesday night and had remained unresolved. Thursdays had an added bonus of being a weekday and his favourite coffee stall being open. Hot beverages seemed to make everything better.

"Milk and sugar?" Ruth asked, setting the bag of food down on her round kitchen table.

"Milk, thanks."

Harry moved over to stand next to it, setting the briefcase down beside the chair, folding his arms across his chest for want of something to do with them. His analyst busied herself making tea, pausing, while it stewed, to hand him a couple of plates – a flicker of nerves momentarily lighting her eyes at the domesticity of the moment. Harry just smiled and accepted the plates, laying them on the table, asking her where the cutlery was. She looked relieved at that, like he had reaffirmed exactly where they stood. Domestic kitchen moments were okay. Setting the table was not going to disrupt the status quo.

Padding over, she handed him a mug of tea and set her own down, digging into the bag of Chinese food.

"I don't know about you," she began, nervously, "but I really need to eat soon."

"Me too," He was starving. Absolutely ravenous. "Shall we, then?"

Inclining his head, he waited until she made to sit down before sitting himself. It was a slightly outdated movement, he realised as he did it, and faltered slightly. Ruth did not seem to mind, however. She just smiled and took her seat, turning her attention away to the box of spring rolls on front of them. Tipping several out onto her plate, she selected one with her fingers and bit into it. Harry, investigating a box of chow mein, watched her with mild fascination. It was a little strange, he mused, to want to watch a woman eat. Wanting to watch a woman dress or undress made sense. That had to do with nudity and thus to do with sex. Wanting to watch her talk was much the same – all about the lips and the soft timbre of her voice. Watching her eat, however, implied more than sexual attraction.

"How much of that report do you have left?" she asked, forcing Harry to abandon his pondering of sex and obsession.

He frowned, considering his answer. "Not much," he told her, picking through the chow mein he had heaped onto his plate, removing the water chestnuts. "An hour or so, perhaps. I've finished all the body. I just have a few details to root out, amongst those dreadful reports."

Ruth shot him a mock frown.

"People put a lot of effort into those dreadful reports, you know."

That warmed him. A smile slipped across his face before he could fully stop it. He fought the urge to drop his fork, push his chair back from the table, walk around it and pull her into his arms. Every other want in the world paled in comparison to how much he wanted to touch her. A few seconds of calm breathing, however, and the urge dissipated slightly. Ruth lifted her eyes to catch his, again, and they smiled at each other. Easy smiles, happy uncomplicated smiles. For once, there was no pain in them. Tonight, they did not have to be bittersweet, they finally just got to be.

"It's a wonderful report," he told her, with just a little honey in his voice. This was not the moment for seduction, but he was more than happy for her to know how much he wanted her. She had made it abundantly clear how much she wanted him, just by asking him here tonight. It might not have been considered particularly brazen, for most women, but it was the Ruth equivalent to waltzing naked into his office and throwing herself across his desk.

"Thank you," Ruth smiled then went back to her food.

They ate for about half a minute in silence, then her eyes fell to his gentle picking and she nodded gently in the direction of his plate.

"You don't like water chestnuts?"

"No," he sighed. "They have this strange consistency."

Ruth's lips twitched a little, eyes sparkling at him. "You have a strange relationship with textures, don't you? Don't like the consistency of water chestnuts, velvet doesn't feel right..."

"It doesn't," he insisted, quietly.

"...very strange."

"One of my many strange attributes," Harry warned her.

Ruth's smile just widened slightly.

"I suppose I'll have to get used to them."

.

They finished an admirable amount of the food Harry had brought, chatting idly over the day and work as they did so. At some point, a query on her report came into question and the briefcase was brought out, laptop and files inside. They dug through the contents of the file until they found what they were looking for and argued over the best option for securing the conference their threatened Consul was attending, next week. After the food was finished, they broke open a bottle of red and moved to the couch in the living room.

They whittled away nearly two hours, Harry making calls and typing notes while Ruth pored through endless assessments which had been sent to him for consideration, prioritising them in order of importance, for their case – laughing outright at just a few of them.

"He must be the first Consul I've ever heard of to have security cameras in his bedroom," Harry chuckled, as Ruth questioned a report.

"I'm sure Mrs Consul Wood is thrilled."

Harry gave a bark of laughter then tempered it with a frown.

"I'm sure." He sighed, reaching over and turning another page of his file. "When did Torrance Wood arrive back in Shanghai, last year, after his trip to Beijing?"

"September..." Ruth leant over, selecting one of the folders from the coffee table and retracting onto the couch, this time drawing her feet up with her, "...twenty first. He was travelling with his wife. Son was left behind and..." she frowned, a beautiful set of lines appearing beneath her dark brows. "I think he was still using the previous security company at the time."

A low groan formed in the back of Harry's throat. However many leads they followed up, there did not seem to be any headway in finding out who had tried to kill the Consul at the embassy, nor who had sent the threat on his life now that he was back in London – nor if the two were the same person. If Ruth shared his annoyance, she did not share it. There was endless patience in her eyes as she frowned down at the report, continuing to read him out details as he entered them in.

"Julian Verne, the head of the current security company, met with Wood on the ninth of December, a contract was decided less than a week later and signed on the fourteenth."

"Fourteenth was..?"

"A Friday."

Ruth sighed and continued to reel off the rest of the information on the page.

Harry was only partly listening. As she talked, she had pushed her foot out on front of her, so that it came to rest just a dozen inches or so from his side. It was jiggling slightly, up and down, in time to her seemingly frantic thoughts. It looked incredibly delicate, thought Harry, watching it within its white sock. Small, perfectly sculpted. He could see the gentle half-moon crescents of her toenails and wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch her. He only just managed hardest to resist, turning his attention back to the screen on front of him and swallowing hard.

"...no intel from Six led us to believe there was a threat," Ruth finished and raised her eyes to him.

Another distraction. She had beautiful eyes. Pupils wide with affection, irises light aquamarine and flecked with grey. The lashes that surrounded them were dark, without any hint of makeup, this evening. The lids were bare, also. All beautiful, thought Harry, all perfect. Opening her mouth, his beautiful analyst prepared to launch into further explanation of her report but, in that moment, Harry gave up trying not to touch her.

"You're shaking the couch," he whispered gently and, reaching out, he stilled the tremor in her foot.

Ruth's eyes widened slightly, fear and excitement flashing across her face.

"Sorry," she muttered.

With a little intake of breath, she started to pull back, but Harry tightened his grip, preventing her from doing so. Murmuring softly 'don't, he slipped his fingers further down, over the soft nubs of his toes, over the ball of her foot and into the soft sole. She was warm beneath his fingertips, so incredibly delicate. It was strange, he thought, feeling the same bones and tendons that he had but in such a more beautiful package. Easing her foot towards him, he watched her leg straighten, the muscles flexing briefly in her calves. He pressed his thumb a little deeper into her foot, making slow, gentle circles.

Ruth's lips formed the shadow of his name, but made no sound.

There had been a hundred moments like this, thought Harry, when everything came down to the immediate. His breath, heavy in his chest, hers short and rough. Eyes all pupils and want. In the past, they had ignored these moments. In the past, someone had come storming in, with news of an imminent atrocity and the immediate had been forgotten. Now, however, they basked in it. Ruth's lap was still strewn with files and papers. Harry had his laptop and Ruth's report on the Consul Wood case. Neither of them were paying much attention to those things, anymore, though. Harry's fingers curled around the side of her foot, sliding down to massage the heel. Ruth watched him intently. It took a huge surge of bravery, for him slip his fingers further up to the hard ridge of her ankle. Once he was there, however, he was infinitely glad he had taken the gamble. Ruth's breathing quickened, the pulse of her – which he could feel, beneath her smooth skin – thrilled faster. He could not believe how soft she was, how beautiful and delicate. And all Ruth, he reminded himself.

Since he had started loving her, he had been with other women. No more than two months after she had floated away on that barge, in fact, he had sought solace in another woman's body. At the time, he had believed it might soothe the ache inside of him – that he needed to do it, or he would be stuck in a rut over Ruth forever. He had been wrong, of course. It had not worked. All he had thought of, the entire time, was her. His lover's skin became Ruth's skin. His lover's whimpers and breaths became hers too. It had been a beautiful sort of agony.

Now, Harry could see that he had not done Ruth justice. Her skin was infinitely softer than he had imagined. The tempo of her breaths was infinitely more alluring. As the fabric of her jeans slid up easily to the swell of her calf, Harry paused, circling his touch back around; ghosting over her skin, memorising her.

"Do you want me to read out the rest of this?" she asked, breathlessly.

Work. They were supposed to be working. Of course.

"Phone number for... uh..." Harry glanced down at his computer screen, not moving his hand from her ankle, where his thumb was still stroking her, softly. "Julian Verne and the man running Wood's security team?"

Ruth reeled two numbers off, stammering only slightly on the latter man's. "I have the local headquarters, if you want to-,"

She never got any further than that because his finger slipped slightly, down into the shallow below her ankle bone, and her breath seemed to catch in her throat.

"I've got them," Harry told her. "Thanks, though."

Oh, this was torture.

Her eyes were huge and fixed with complete adoration on him.

What had he done to deserve this, Harry asked himself, to be loved by something good and young and beautiful? Sliding his hand back down, he resolved to show her how happy she made him. Fingers gentle but firm, he massaged the ball of her foot again, a little deeper this time. The movement earned him a soft sigh from his lady. For a moment, everything seemed to collapse in on them, just a strange mix of adrenaline and lust. Harry breathed slowly, skin feeling tight.

"How much more of that report do you have left?" she whispered.

Harry shook his head. "Not much. I mean, it's almost... it's pretty much," his hand was on her ankle again, fingers curling into her flesh, "nearly there."

Her toes stretched out until they were pressing into the side of his leg. Slow, soft, gentle pressure. Each touch was provocative nonetheless. As she made the movement, a file slid off her leg and sprawled onto the floor. It caused Ruth to blink, in surprise, but neither of them turned to look. Harry's throat felt tight, like there was something stuck in it. Expectation, perhaps. His body did not feel like his own, but it was responding in a very familiar way for her. Not quite a noticeable way, yet, but he should probably keep an eye on that – keep his lust in check. They were supposed to be working...

"That's good."

Ruth's eyes washing across his face, to his hands, to the laptop he held on his knee, then back up to his face again.

"There's a synopsis, but I'll be there to explain it, so its not really relevant," Harry continued to ramble. "Oh, and a couple of recommendations I have to put in at the end, but I can really do that later..."

"Right."

"Thank you for your help," he murmured.

"You're welcome."

Her voice was low, her eyes dark.

"Okay..."

Harry was not entirely sure which one of them made the first move. As his hand slid up her ankle to her leg, he became dimly aware that he was laying his laptop down. Across from him, Ruth had leant forwards pushing the last few files she held over onto the coffee table. They collided almost forcefully, the suddenness of their desire threatening to overcome the both of them. Harry's hand found the curve of his companion's jaw, cupping her face and turning it up to meet his. She pulled her legs back towards her, bringing his hand, which still lay against her leg, up with it. They moved closer, lips meeting, mouths parting to brush tongues a little sooner than Harry would have expected but, simultaneously, not soon enough.

He wanted more. He wanted everything.

Leaning into her, his fingers closing around the curve of her leg as he leant over. One kiss then two – both wet and sweet – he slipped closer, feeling the hard edge of her leg against his soft side. Ruth's hand had risen to his chest, grasping at the fabric of his shirt, pulling him closer. In between kisses, Harry caught glimpses of her, beautiful eyes fixed unabashedly on him, fair skin flushed pink across the rise of her chest. Compelled by the sudden urge to kiss her there, Harry tilted his head down, brushing his lips against the side of her neck, the sharp edge of her collarbone then down to her ribs, just over her heart. Her fingertips grazed across the back of his neck, gently, ever so gently applying pressure.

He kissed her skin, then lifted his face to bury into the crook of her neck again, breathing her in, breaths quickening as Ruth kissed his cheek, arching towards him slightly. The hand that had stroked his neck retracted and Harry felt it curl around his back instead. She tugged at him, coaxing him closer as she kissed his lips one more time before lying back on the couch.

Harry paused, just slightly. Letting himself lie over her was a little forwards and this was all going so well. He didn't want to push.

"Harry?" she caught his attention.

He swallowed, meeting her gaze. "Yes?"

"Come here," she beckoned, tugging at his shirt with one hand.

Relief and desire flooded through him. He acquiesced, leaning into her gentle pressure, meeting her soft lips again. They rolled into one another, bodies shifting, arms wrapping tight around one another. It seemed that, the closer they got, the higher Harry's heart rate soared. Breathing hard, he could barely think as she slid her hands across his back, pressing him into her. This was good, this was amazing, Harry thought as his breathing shortened into panting. This was what he had wanted all along.

Ruth's tongue grazed his lower lip, then she drew back, slightly, eyes lifting to meet his gaze.

She said nothing as she slipped his shirt free from the waistband of his trousers, but her expression was worth a thousand words. Nervous want, laced with love and tension. She wanted this, he wanted her, but they would never be as simple as that. They had been thrown apart too many times to be confidant in coming together. Taking his body weight onto one arm, Harry slid his other hand up, tracing the rise of her cheek, running his thumb along the edge of her lower lip.

"This is lovely," he whispered, dipping in to kiss the skin that he had traced.

Ruth smiled, looking a little bashful.

"This reminds me of being a teenager," she admitted.

Harry laughed.

"Speak for yourself," he told her. "I spent precious little of my teenage life sprawled on sofas with beautiful women."

She blushed, even as she shifted her leg, allowing his thigh to slip between hers. Harry kissed her neck, watching as her eyes danced over his. They way they were lying, his rather swollen groin was pressed into her hip and the sensation was growing with each wriggle she gave, underneath him. It was almost maddening. He wanted, oh he wanted more than anything, to bury himself inside of her. Self-control and self-denial had kept him alive, all these years. They had helped him survive all the horrors of their job, as well as the horror as being close to her without being able to touch, but they felt strangely superfluous, now. Harry did not want to deny any longer. And, as Ruth breathed heavily beneath him, Harry didn't think she wanted to either.

She squeezed his side with her leg.

Harry had a minor lapse in sanity as he realised he was, technically, between her thighs.

"And how old were you, when you first did this?" Ruth asked, eyes slightly playful.

Harry breathed out a nervous reaction. He wasn't good at sharing, but he wanted this, he wanted her and she wanted him to share. "This?" he asked, "or sex?"

Her breaths quickened just a little. It pushed her belly harder into him.

"Sex," she answered, as casually as it was probably possible for her to answer, trapped beneath his body.

Such a good little spook, he mused softly. He was pushed up against her, hard and eager and vulnerable, and she was asking for secrets. She could give Juliet a run for her money, thought Harry, in sexual manipulation. It was all light hearted for Ruth, of course. She was nothing like Juliet, in most ways. She was kind. She had integrity and incredible inner strength. She was beautiful and intelligent and would never betray him. Ever. Feeling infinitely glad to have met her, Harry nudged in, kissing her cheek.

"Twenty," he murmured, just a little hesitantly. "I was twenty."

Ruth's eyes showed just a flicker of surprise.

Didn't expect that, did she? Harry smiled a little. He supposed he wouldn't have expected it either, after looking at his recent history with women – his early marriage to his wife and the numerous affairs. It was the truth, though. Harry had resolved always to answer Ruth's questions truthfully.

"I was a shy boy," he explained, while his lover nibbled at her lower lip.

Leaning in, he began to kiss her gently, again, not bothering to part between kisses, nor to open his eyes. He kept it soft, light, undemanding, lulling his companion back into the rhythm of it before pressing his body closer. He might have been a late starter, in his exploration of the opposite sex, but he had ample experience since then. He knew what he could do to her, how much pleasure he could give her, if she let him. If she relaxed her body and surrendered it to him, he could drive her to the point of ecstasy and back. He could make her quiver underneath his touch. He had imagined it, often enough. He had imagined it almost every night for the past seven years.

Tracing the rise of her ribs, he brushed his wrist against the rise of her breast. Even through two layers of clothing, she trembled in response. The movement came was welcome reassurance for Harry, who – despite knowing his experience was more than enough and that Ruth really didn't mind anyway – was moving cautiously, through nerves. He could do this. They could do this.

"Would it be completely out of order, to ask to take this upstairs?" he asked her, carefully.

Ruth whispered a very breathless "no" against his cheek.

No... Not out of order. She'd like it, then.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief and leant into the crook of her neck, again, breathing her in. She smelt beautiful; a soft, warm scent, slightly of oranges. No, not oranges, Clementines. It was not the scent of her perfume – Harry knew her perfume off by heart, every floral tone, every spice and edge – it must have been what she had washed with, then. Shampoo, perhaps, or body crème. Her skin was smooth enough to have been rubbed with crème, Harry thought, nudging closer, feeling his lover arch her belly up against him. Much as he wanted to go upstairs, to get closer, he did not much want to move from this spot. She was so warm underneath him, her body perfectly moulded to his. They had all night, to explore one another. All night.

He felt so incredibly lucky to finally have this. So many times it had almost been ripped from their grasp. So many times, they had almost been parted from each other forever. Her life had hung in the balance. His had been dangled off the edge of a tower block. They had been tried and tested and almost broken but, now, they were together.

Ruth's fingers pressed again against his lower back, slipping beneath the edge of his trousers, kneading his skin as she pressed him into her.

God, he was hard.

"Ruth..."

"Upstairs," she whispered, giving one last tug at him before releasing her grip and kissing him firmly on the lips. "Now."

Harry was nothing if not willing to follow orders, especially from such a source as Ruth Evershed. Lifting himself away from her, he staggered off of the couch, wincing slightly at the discomfort of his now much tighter boxers and trousers. Ruth took a moment to follow him, pulling herself into a seated position then taking his hand as he offered it down to her. Her fingers were slender and warm within his palm. Perfect. As Ruth stepped towards him, she smiled.

"Not such a shy boy now?" she asked, her voice excited but nervous.

Harry swallowed back his reply. His lover had no idea how shy he was feeling, right now. He was terrified – he was petrified, in fact – but he also knew that they had both made the decision to be here, in this situation. He loved her. She loved him. They wanted this and he was more than capable of pleasing her. At least, he had been, last time that he indulged in this sort of activity, though that was admittedly quite a long time ago, now. Taking a deep breath, Harry squeezed Ruth's fingers, earning a smile.

"A little shy," he admitted.

Her eyes looked very slightly relieved.

"That's okay," she told him, softly.

Fingers still entwined, Harry let Ruth lead the way towards her bedroom. The hall outside the living room was dark, but Harry's lover knew the way off by heart and she led him carefully. The stairs were slightly awkward, but she did not let go of his hand the whole time, just adjusting her pace to suit his and turning her body to maintain the contact instead. Maybe she thought he would disappear, if she did let go. Part of Harry still felt that way too. Tonight had gone so perfectly. He did not want to give the world a chance to strike back at their fortune. Clinging together, then, they reached the top of the stairs and fell into one another again. Their lips met, hard and demanding.

Tongues wet, hot breath mixing, everything was suddenly moving faster than before. As Harry slipped his hand through her hair, Ruth's hands were everywhere. Sides, neck, back, ass, belt, belt buckle. She tugged at him, eyes nervously flitting about his face for a moment as he faltered.

"What?" she whispered.

"I have to ask..." he trailed off, shifting nervously.

A small line formed between her dark brows.

"Ask what?"

Harry took a steadying breath. "Are you ready for this? I mean," he paused, licking his lower lip again. "We don't have to. If this is too fast, we can slow down. Whatever you need, I can-,"

Ruth's finger against his lips stopped his words in their tracks. She leant in, raising both of her hands from his belt. Placing some fingers over his mouth, she murmured his name, running the fingers of her other hand down his cheek.

"You can be so stupid, Harry, so stupid," she whispered, leaning in and kissing him again. Gentle touches, barely brushes, her lips so soft against his own. "I want this," she told him. "I want _you_."

It was hard for her to say that, Harry knew. Ruth was a shy girl. Though she was far less shy than she used to be, she still flinched at sharing her emotions. She still faltered when the conversation brought work and their personal relationship into close juxtaposition. Harry understood why. They had spent a very long time – a huge period of their lives – trying to pretend they did not have feelings for each other. It was only logical that she still have remnants of that caution. That Ruth had managed to overcome that caution was a source of great joy to Harry. She had chosen him. She had chosen him over her own fears and she had invited him back to her house, tonight. She wanted him.

"You already have me," he murmured. Lifting his hands, he wrapped his fingers around her wrists, stroking the underside of each of them then dipping his head in to kiss both, in turn.

Ruth's lips twitched into a tiny smile.

"Bedroom?"

"Bedroom."

They walked gently along the dark corridor, pausing lazily to kiss one another as they went. It started off slow but, by the time they reached the bedroom, desperation had risen again within the both of them and the kisses were coming harder and faster. They almost tripped over a discarded shoe as they entered the bedroom. Ruth balanced them, sliding a hand over the light switch.

The lamp overhead turned on, flooding the room with light. Harry squinted, looking around. Ruth's bedroom was almost exactly as he had imagined it. A large bed stood up against the far wall. The carpet and walls were neutral, as were the bed sheets. As Ruth stepped back into the room, Harry turned, looking around them. She had a table, over in the corner, strewn with a small array of cosmetics and suchlike. There was a chest of drawers near the bed. But where were the books? He found them up against the wall, under the window. Stacks of them.

"No bookshelves?" he asked Ruth, turning back to find her a few paces from his side.

She gave a wry smile, unbuttoning her shirt and peeling it off, leaving her in just a t-shirt. "I never bothered, after I came back. I suppose I thought there would be less for you all to sort out, next time..." she trailed off.

The next time she died for him, she meant.

Harry did not have time to feel guilty, however. As soon as the words had left her mouth, Ruth gave a little shrug and stepped forwards, reaching out to him again.

"It doesn't matter," she told him, her voice soft and almost confidential. Harry let himself be guided closer by it, close enough for her to reach out and pull him the rest of the way. Her left hand was hot against his sides as her right one curled under his belt buckle, again, pulling it free. He felt the cinch of it tightening then coming loose from itself, heard the metallic clink of it sliding free. His throat swallowed, quite independent of his mind telling it to. "I don't need bookshelves," Ruth continued, a little nervous but a lot sure of what she was doing. "I have everything I need."

And so did he.

She tilted her head back and they kissed again. And again, Harry's heart beating faster with each passing second. They walked backwards, towards the bed, as Ruth pulled free his belt, both beginning to pant as their kisses left them less time for breathing. As they drew closer, Harry's hands found Ruth's bare skin, under the hem of her t-shirt, and things grew even more heated. Skin on skin, they were electric. Everything fibre in Harry's being felt alive and his companion felt the same, if they way she was leaning into him was anything to go by.

It was not particularly graceful, or elegant, but neither of them cared. He traced her skin while they picked themselves loose of the extremities of their clothing. She murmured his name against the side of his neck as he held her close. Their shoes were off before they got halfway across the room, socks quick were to follow, (Ruth laughing as Harry told her he 'wasn't going to be _that_ guy'). By the time they reached the bed, the buttons on Harry's shirt was half undone, courtesy of her nimble fingertips, and Harry was turning his mind towards returning the action.

His palms were already flat against her back, beneath her t-shirt, cradling her gently as they embraced. Carefully, still half afraid that he was moving too fast and she might spook, he slipped it up, stepping half a pace back so that she could lift her arms. Ruth did not spook, of course. Like always, she was ten times braver than Harry could have expected. Watching him steadily, not once lowering her gaze or blushing, she lifted her arms, helping to extricate herself from the fabric that separated them.

Underneath, she was beautiful. Truly beautiful. Harry was not entirely sure what to say, apart from that – and he feared that saying it too much would cause her to lose faith in his sincerity – so he kept his mouth shut. She was beautiful, though. In the depths of his obsession, Harry had imagined her in intimate detail, but none of his imaginations had come close. She had a tiny triad of freckles, just to the left of her belly button. Apart from that, however, her skin was smooth and fair and unmarred. She had the waist of a woman who had never done hard labour or borne children, tapered gently up to her narrow ribs. The shadow down the centre of her belly was faint, but told him that she still swam, occasionally. She was probably not as thin as women liked to be but she had a lovely figure. Besides, these were the curves he had imagined for years. Seeing them before him, now, Harry felt like a man having finished a long pilgrimage to a holy temple. To him, she was perfect. In fact, in that moment, Harry thought he might kneel here and worship her for the rest of his days, if Ruth would let him.

"Hurry up, then, it's freezing in here," she joked gently, bringing him gently back to reality.

She was right, of course, the room was quite cold and she was in nothing but a grey silk bra. Always mindful of her welfare, Harry placed his hands flat against her back again, drawing her close. She gave a little noise of surprise, but smiled in pleasure.

"Why don't you have heating on? It's January."

"It's on a timer, to save money," she replied, nudging her belly close to his, pulling the last few buttons free on his shirt as she did. "I don't get paid enough."

He chuckled, hands sliding up to trace along the straps of her bra, down to the clasp. One glance down at her eyes told him he was allowed, so he unclipped her, letting the fabric fall away against her skin. They parted and Ruth tugged his shirt, discarding it to the ground at the same time as her bra. For a second or two, they stood a few inches apart, silently appraising each other. Harry felt a twinge of uncertainty, in the pit of his stomach. Ruth was beautiful. Her breasts were soft and perfect, their nipples redder than he had imagined. The rest of their skin, however, was as smooth and fair as the skin on her belly. He, however, was not beautiful. He was spattered with scars and chubby in his middle age. What had once been muscle was now hidden beneath too many years well-fed behind a desk. He had been a pretty boy, he thought, but there was little left of that, now. Inside and out, the Service had used him and chewed him up.

Slowly, tentatively, Ruth reached out and traced one mark, that ran from beneath his left ribs down to his hip, in a sickle-shape. Her finger pushed just hard enough into the scar tissue that he felt it, just hard enough to make tension lines in the skin as she dragged it along.

"They really hurt you, didn't they?" she whispered, running the course of the scar then letting her finger fall to hook inside the waistband of his trousers.

"I'm fine," he told her, a reassurance she did not need.

She knew he was fine because he was always fine. He was Harry Pearce, after all. They had used him and chewed him up, cut him and scarred him a thousand times over. He had to be fine. He was their leader, their boss, the one still point in their constantly shifting world. He had no choice but to be fine, to take the scars. He did not have the luxury of feeling. Except for out here, tonight, in this strange time that he and Ruth had carved for themselves.

In the past, love had always been separate from the Service. Family and safety had always been separate, too. When something terrible had happened at work, he had returned home to a wife who he could not explain his pain too – who would not have understood even if he had tried to. Once his wife had left, he had Juliet, sporadically, but while she had understood the pain, her interest in him had been purely physical. There had been no healing, there. Now, however, he had someone who understood him as both a spook and as a man. It was a liberating feeling. Ruth knew why he bore the scars, but still cared to touch them, to ask if they hurt. She was sanctuary without denial. She was, perhaps, the one thing on God's earth that could save a man like him. And she was beautiful. So beautiful.

"I love you," he whispered, softly.

When she lifted her eyes, Harry could tell that she knew how much he meant it.

Her fingers tugged him closer, pulling his trousers free, tracing along the band of his boxers beneath and causing muscles deep in his abdomen to twitch.

"Come to bed, then,"

A little dazed, a little love-drunk, he nodded and staggered forwards. And they did.

.


	7. Chapter 7

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_Chapter 7 – Principle and Reality_

.

They fell to the bed to the soft noise of springs, Ruth unwrapping her arms from around Harry's neck to scramble up across the bed sheets. Her companion kicked off his trousers, clambering after her. Panting softly, they folded themselves against one another again, hands grasping for purchase, lips seeking contact. The feeling in the air was one of quiet desperation. Ruth was sure, at this point, she should try to slow this down but, truthfully, she didn't want to. This was good. This was perfect. Harry's hands were pulling her gently up across the sheets, one thigh was slipping between hers as he leant down, pressing kisses along the side of her neck. He was good at this seduction routine, Ruth mused, squirming in delight. Looming over her, he was hot and hard against her thigh. Hot and heady, she arched up into him.

It was really little more than teenage grinding but, after years of standing in one place and a whole week of inching towards each other, it was incredibly gratifying. Their heavy breaths filled the room, accompanied by the smallest of noises as they guided each other in their exploration. Harry's hand found her breast, palming her gently. Ruth slipped her fingers though his hair, following his head down as he suckled her skin. Neck, collarbone, chest, the dip at the top of her sternum. His name fell from her lips more than once, her mind still marvelling over the fact that she was able to do so, now.

"You are beautiful" he whispered back.

Heart thrilling, Ruth lifted her legs, hooking them around his sides and squeezing hard. "Love you," she breathed, rubbing her ankle against the fabric of his boxers and pulling them down over one buttock. As her companion gave a half-smile, a few more endearments fell from her lips.

Despite the intense physicality of the moment, part of Ruth still couldn't believe that she was actually doing this – that Harry was lying on top of her and she had her legs wrapped around his waist – but his smile brought her back, reassuring her that this was not a dream. Taking a steadying breath, she tugged at the waistband again and left Harry to do the rest of the work. Rolling off her, onto his side, he pulled the boxers free and kicked them onto the floor.

Underneath, he lived up well to her imagination. They appraised each other silently, for half a minute, the duvet low across their bodies. Ruth blushed but Harry did not look at all bothered by the scrutiny. In fact, quite the opposite – he seemed relieved to finally have licence to return the favour. His eyes devoured her, hot and wanting. Heart thundering, Ruth lay very still. A thousand and one thoughts rushing through her head, doubts, insecurities and self-conscious worries, but they were all banished as he leant back forwards, tracing his hands lightly across her sides. Again, softly and with an almost reverent tone, he told her she was beautiful. Ruth smiled. The repetition of the sentiment would have grown tired, long ago, if it had not been uttered with such compelling dazedness. It was quite endearing, really. He only seemed half aware that his lips were forming the words. His entire being was focussed in, on her.

Leaning over, he kissed her gently, shifting his body across to take up his previous position. Ruth let him roll her back, wrapping her legs around him as he did so. To her intense pleasure, they felt incredibly right, to be completely naked and against one another. They felt even better than she had imagined. As Harry dipped his head down, to kiss her lips again, Ruth smiled. They were quite impressive, she thought to herself. Harry was not a young man, but he was as hard as lovers she had in her twenties had been. She wasn't a bold girl, but she was arching up into him like it was the most natural thing in the world. They were perfect. They were beautiful.

"Ruth?" Harry whispered, against her neck.

Ruth sighed. He was using that tone again – the one he used when he was about to was her if she was sure about this.

"You don't have to ask if I'm okay," she assured him, softly, running her hand against his cheek. "I'm okay."

A flicker of unadulterated love shifted across his face.

"I know. That wasn't what I was going to say."

Ruth felt her cheeks heat. "Oh... right."

Harry smiled, leaning in closer, curling over her so that they were pressed together all along their length. Holding his weight on his outstretched arms, he felt hard under her grip.

"I'm glad you're okay, though," he whispered, into her cheek.

Ruth swallowed, somewhat too breathless to make a concise reply. Her hands slid behind his head, toying with the soft hair at the very edge of his hairline. Her belly was pressed eagerly up into his. She could feel her heart pounding against her left ribs and his heart pounding against her right – and lower, down in the crook of her thigh.

"What were you going to ask me?" she asked, before all cognisant thought abandoned her.

"I was going to ask what sort of protection you wanted to use," he told her, smiling softly, "because I'm still fairly capable of getting you-,"

"-I'm on the pill," she interrupted quietly, "as of last Thursday."

Harry shifted against her, looking mildly amused. "That was a little presumptive of you."

If Ruth's cheeks were flushed before, they were scarlet, now. Clearing her throat, she tightened her legs against him.

"Just a little," she admitted.

"I enjoy the presumption."

Deciding if she did not make the first move, they might never get started, Ruth nudged her hips up into Harry's. It was only a small movement, but it sparked him into motion. Giving a very soft groan, he shifted his weight, freeing himself from where he had been positioned, between her leg and her belly, and lay himself at her entrance instead. Once there, however, he did not move to couple them, just pressed himself against her again and returned his attentions to her upper body. Kisses, gentle touches, grazing fingertip; Ruth thought she might be burning with the intensity of his touch.

They shifted and repositioned, Harry keeping her mouth too busy for Ruth to call him a tease. She thought it loudly, though, breath catching in her throat each time he dragged himself against her, then pulled away. He repeated the play several times, always chancing a glance up at her face each time, to read her expression. He was confidant, she could read that in his face, but innately requiring of her approval. Ruth hoped he found it, in the sharp little breaths he was drawing from her lips, in the half-formed utterances of his name. It was growing almost too much. If he didn't make a move soon, Ruth told herself firmly, she would have to roll them over and show him how this was done. She never really found the incentive to push him away, to do so, however. The pull of their heavy contact was too great.

And, all too soon, interrupted.

The shrill noise of Harry's phone ringing caused both of them to freeze on the spot. Hand wrapped around Harry's shoulder, Ruth felt her boss jump slightly, at the sound.

Phone ringing. Work calling...

They could not help but react. The ring was one all spooks were programmed to respond to. It was an emergency tone, the one they had set for the Thames House switchboard. Work calling... would be reading across the screen, in those pale small letters. Ruth knew the sound and the sight of it just as well as Harry did. It was the call that came when something more dreadful had happened – or when something dreadful was about to happen. Ruth's legs tightened, around her lover, her heart dropping into her stomach. Work calling... rarely meant anything good. Especially as it was definitely Harry's phone that was ringing. Ruth could remember leaving hers downstairs.

After the first ring, her boss propped himself upright, his attention drawn to the source of the noise. As he pinpointed its location, Ruth expected him to roll off of her, but – to her surprise and utter relief – he just gave a mildly disgruntled noise and lowered himself down against her again.

"It's probably nothing," he murmured to her, almost under his breath.

Ruth wondered which of them he was trying to convince. Nobody phoned him from the Grid, at this time at night, for nothing. Harry wasn't the type to receive social calls well. Stroking her fingers through his hair, she weighed up the benefits of keeping such a comment to herself against her duty, as his employee, to point it out. Eventually, the latter won.

"Harry, you should get that," she told him, softly.

He shook his head, pressing a warm kiss against the side of her mouth. "If it's really urgent, they'll call back," he told her, hazel eyes reassuring.

So it turned into a waiting game. Ruth closed her eyes, letting herself sink into the moment, praying that the phone would stop ringing and never start again. Harry leant a little closer and they kissed half-heartedly. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the phone stopped ringing. For ten precarious seconds, they hovered just a few centimetres away from one another, revelling in the silence. Harry's shoulders were a little tense beneath Ruth's fingertips, though he was doing the best to hide it from her, stroking her skin, pressing against her gently. After nearly half a minute had passed and the phone did not ring again, he withdrew a little, flashing her a smile.

"There you go," he nodded, "nothing important."

Nothing important.

The joy had only just begun to form in Ruth's chest when the phone had started to ring again.

This time, Harry's reaction was more visceral. Gently disentangling himself from Ruth's arms, he swore and rolled over out of bed, feet hitting the floor rather sharply. As Ruth drew the duvet up around her, to protect herself from the sudden cold of his absence – and the soaring sense of disappointment in her belly – he padded over to the bottom of the bed, where he had discarded his trousers, and rooted through their pockets for his phone. He found it before it stopped ringing and raised it to his ear, answering with one swipe across the screen.

"What?" he snapped, angrily.

Ruth could hear a nervous pause on the other end of the line.

After a few startled seconds, however, whomever it was on the other end managed to gather themselves enough to speak. Their faint voice sounded, tinny, over the speakers. Pressed against Harry's ear, the phone was too far away for Ruth to hear what was being said, but the voice sounded female. Erin, then, she reasoned, watching the way Harry's expression shifted and changed as he was relayed information. As he let out a low sigh and apologetically glanced her way, the reality of the situation began to seep in. Work calling... was never good. Whatever had happened, on the Grid, it was something that clearly needed Harry's attention, or Harry's presence.

Ruth forced her eyes away from her boss, suddenly aware that they were slightly over-bright. Tears. Fantastic, she thought, raising her hand to press them away before they properly started. Tears were the last thing she needed, right now. This was no time to be acting like a silly girl, she scolded herself. If someone had called Harry, at this time, then it must be something important. This was part of the job, she reminded herself. She had signed on for this, when she had agreed to try and make their relationship work. Pulling her knees up to her chin, she wrapped the duvet tightly around herself. Somehow, knowing she should have expected this still didn't make it feel any less rotten.

At the end of her bed, Harry began to pace, still completely naked, still half-hard. The pacing was so reminiscent of what he did, at work, that Ruth would have laughed, but for the waves of disappointment and frustration raging through her.

"Who was the contact?" Harry frowned, down the phone line. The tinny voice of Erin answered, presumably bearing more bad news because Harry's expression grew even more dire. "Do we have validation on those codes?" he asked, wearily.

Ruth let out a slow sigh, trying to calm herself. When he finished this call and turned to her, to tell her he had to go in, she had to be strong. This was her place, now. There was no room in their world for self-pity. They had a job to do and it had to come first.

Her eyes fell to Harry again and she tried very hard to concentrate on him rather on the thoughts that were raging inside her. He was still pacing, the whites scars on his torso a little starker, now that he was standing more directly under her overhead light. They almost shone, Ruth noted, watching them twist and dance with ever step he took. Would he ever be able to tell her all of their stories – who had carved them and why? She doubted it, very much. Perhaps a few of them had been made on nights like these, she thought, bitterly. Nights when he had been called from his warm bed and his warm lover, to crawl back into the service of a cold country, who would never know his face.

As if drawn by her thoughts on him, Harry's eyes darted over to her and Ruth blushed, turning away. She silently appraised her collection of books, wondering if her new lover thought her strange for not owning bookshelves, while she waited for the phone call to come to an end.

It happened fairly soon.

"No, I understand," Harry sighed, with an air of finality and Ruth heard him take one last turn, pacing one final time along the end of her bed before stopping and standing with one hand on his hip. "Yes," he told Erin, or whoever was on the other end of the phone. "Calum can stay put but saddle yourself and Dimitri up. Yes, I know. It's a bloody mess, isn't it?" He gave another sigh, then a short, "goodnight Erin," and hung up.

Ruth did not turn her head, just continued to focus on her books, reading off titles, trying to remember the last time she had read them all. Nearby, she heard the click of Harry turning off his phone, then the sound of it falling to the end of the bed. It made a soft noise, mostly muffled by her duvet. Careful to wipe any extraneous emotion from her face, Ruth slowly looked back in his direction – just in time to see him pad over and slip beneath the covers beside her.

Quite unintentionally, her body tensed as he drew close. Perhaps Harry noticed, because he said her name a little too softly for her liking.

"Ruth..."

"It's fine," she rushed out, turning to face him, duvet still clasped around her to guard against the cold of the room and the sudden awkwardness of being naked. "I understand, if you need to go."

An expression of hurt flickered across Harry's eyes.

"I don't _want_ to go."

"But you have to," Ruth nodded. "I know." A second wave of anger and frustration had welled up inside her. She knew it was illogical, that this was what they did, but it was so hard not to be angry. Swallowing, she forced it beneath a veneer of calm. "What do they need you for?" she asked, her voice neutral. It was therapeutic to be able to turn the conversation to work. Work, Ruth understood. Work, she was good at.

Harry looked a little hesitant to elaborate, but cleared his throat and did so anyway.

"They have high-priority intel coming in," he explained, moving to sit a little closer to her. The hand which had looped around her shoulder slipped down her naked back, rubbing her spine. "An informant who claims to be a double-blind asset, working for the SIS in Asia, contacted the Grid half an hour ago. They claim to have information on Torrance Wood which they will only share with me."

Ruth frowned. Information that they would share only with high ranking officials was not an uncommon request. They got that all the time. If they had asked for Harry by name, however... Harry was not a public figure and, therefore, knowing his name was still one of those things which laid weight to an asset's claim to have important information. If they knew Harry, then they had either been run by someone very high up, or had some very good intelligence. Either way, they were important to listen to.

"Did they ask for you personally?" Ruth asked.

Harry nodded, wearily.

"They gave my old black-ops handle, too, from when I worked for Six."

"I take it Erin can't deal with this, on her own, until morning?" Ruth asked, dully.

Harry shot her a very apologetic look. "This asset got in contact through the switchboard, using outdated but valid SIS security codes with grade A access," he told her. "I'm not in the business of black market intelligence, but I know that Grade A codes are almost impossible to come by. These ones had no personnel data linked to them – a ghost account. Those can only really be created by someone inside the system and it must have been done years ago." Harry sighed heavily. "We can't take the chance this is one of our deep cover officers, coming up with something valuable. I've got Erin on the phone to Neilson, to have him look into a possible identification."

They sat quietly, for a while, Ruth considering what she might do to Harry's deep cover black ops SIS asset if she got her hands on him/her. This was bloody ridiculous. What was it about people in their line of work that they had to carry out all their underhand, information-dropping, secret meetings at night? Couldn't they just keep schedules like normal people?

"Are you okay?" Harry asked her, tentatively.

"I'm fine," Ruth shook her head, dismissively. And she was. Well, almost fine, anyway. The initial rage had drained away and, though she was still left with a smouldering resentment for whoever had disturbed them – and a little bit of irrational resentment towards Erin and Harry himself – it was nothing she couldn't deal with. Harry lifted his hand to her cheek and she turned to him, giving him a soft smile as she leant into his palm. It was wonderfully warm and comforting, despite the tension in the air between them. Ruth gave herself a moment to let the remainder of her anger drift away, before continuing. "Harry, I know you have to go. I do understand, really."

"I'm as frustrated by all of this as you are," he told her, softy.

Ruth gave another sigh. "I know. I just feel..."

"Sick of it all?"

"Yes," she admitted, quietly. "Sometimes it feels like the world is trying to push us apart."

Harry grimaced. "I know..." A couple of seconds passed then he leant in and kissed her softly on the forehead.

Ruth let out a shuddering breath, aware that Harry was watching her as cautiously as he had been at the beginning of their evening together. This was what breaking down and showing too much emotion did, Ruth scolded herself. Why couldn't she just have acted cool, brushed the phone call off like a real spook would have, in their situation. Harry was used to strong women. Why did she have to show herself to be weak at the first hurdle?

"When do you have to go?" she asked, to distract herself from the frustrated longing, pooling deep in her belly.

"Thirty minutes," Harry answered, without pause. Then, he gave a sigh and flopped down amongst her pillows, running his hands over his head.

For a moment, Ruth considered getting up and dressed, but decided against it. What she wanted, for these next thirty minutes was here, beside her, hazel eyes washing over her face. With a sigh, she shuffled over and lay down by his side.

"Thirty?"

"Well, I need five to get dressed. For the other twenty five, however, I'm all yours."

So this was how it would be, Ruth thought with a sigh. She had him for a time, the service had him for a time. There was always going to be another party, in their relationship.

"Okay." She nodded, softly.

If that was what it took to be with Harry, then Ruth would just have to learn to share. There was no question of going back. What they had tasted together, tonight, was beautiful. They fit well and they would work even better, given a little time. Given time, they could find a place for the personal, amongst it all. Compromise, Ruth realised, was going to be the lynchpin of everything they built together.

Reaching out, she ran her hand down his chest, feeling the many textures of him. Soft skin, fair hair, the rough skin of long-healed scars. He was beautiful, whatever anyone else said, whatever he thought of himself. Biting the inside of her lip, Ruth continued to explore his side, as Harry ran one hand through her hair. Carefully, she mapped him, tracing the line of scars, rising up to brush one pink nipple. He was very pink, she mused, feeling it harden against her skin. He was very pink elsewhere, too, but it wasn't really fair to touch him there until she knew what was going to happen tonight. They had enough time and she wanted this, but it wasn't something she wanted to have to coax him into. As she reached his navel, her eyes darted up to his.

"Do you want to...?" she began to ask.

Harry shook his head, right away. "No," he replied, quite surely.

"Oh," Ruth bit her lip, trying to hide the rush of disappointment that ran through her.

"It's not that I don't want to," Harry admitted, rolling her over onto her back, shifting until their bellies pressed together again. It was a warm and strangely comforting position, to have his weight pressing down into her. "I do," he told her, quietly. "I just don't want to have to leave, afterwards."

His words sent a rush of warmth through Ruth's whole body. Her cheeks flushed and she could not help but wrap her arms a little more tightly around him. So what if their situation was not perfect, she thought, pulling him closer, it was still better than being alone. They might both be pledged in service to the country's defence – bound to its whims, its highs and its lows – but they had one another, now, to make it all seem a little less dire. She wished he did not have to go, but he did. They might as well enjoy what they had left.

"Getting a little sentimental in your old age?" she suggested; a gentle prod at humour, to lighten the situation.

Harry's mouth twitched into a smile.

"Only with you."

"So you leave all your other girls then," Ruth continued, "afterwards?"

"Yes," her lover replied, with mock sincerity. One of his legs slipped between hers, foot icily cold against her leg. Ruth squirmed and protested, but it was only a feeble protestation and Harry just smiled, leaning closer. "_All_ of my other girls," he told her.

Laughter really must be the best medicine, Ruth thought, because all the remaining tension suddenly flooded away as a chuckle fell from her lips. Suddenly, everything began to feel so much better. Harry had to go and that was bad, but he was all hers for the next twenty-five minutes. Lowering his lips to the valley between her breasts, Harry seemed resolved to make the most of their time. He kissed her there, gently, before moving lower, to the dip of her belly.

"All of my hundreds of nubile young lovers," he continued to joke, between soft sucking kisses at her shoulders, her neck, her chest. "I'd leave them all of them, afterwards, but never you."

Ruth tried and failed to smother more laughter.

"You're being ridiculous," she complained half-heartedly, her cheeks a little pink.

"You started this," Harry reminded her, tracing lightly down her sides with his fingertips. They found a ticklish spot, just inside the shallow of her hip, and Ruth squirmed again. "I was fully prepared to keep them all a secret."

They laughed a little more.

The awkwardness in the situation had completely vanished, now. The tightness in her chest was gone, too, replaced by an unnameable warmth. It was going to be okay – they were going to be okay. Like Ruth had told herself, for the past seven years, it was going to be impossible to have a relationship completely separate from work. That, however, did not mean that it was impossible to have any relationship at all. They could make this work. It was going to be frustrating and she knew that they wouldn't have as much time together as Ruth might have liked, but they could still make moments like this. They could carve time, for themselves, from their busy lives. They could resign themselves to their duty but still love, unrepentantly.

"And what makes me different from them?" she asked, looking down at Harry as he pressed kisses along her collarbone, then along the rise of her breast. As his tongue grazed over the tip of her nipple, her eyes fluttered briefly closed.

"Everything," her lover whispered, softly, silkily.

She would have to be careful with this one, Ruth told herself, with a smile. He had managed to divest her of any remaining ire far sooner than any of her previous lovers could have managed. He was silver-tongued, in more ways than one. If he ever did give her genuine cause to be angry with him, she would have to be vigilant not to let him escape punishment, through charm.

He was more than welcome to be charming for now, however.

Closing her eyes, Ruth smiled as Harry continued to joke to her about his harem of lovers, sighed as he continued downwards, pressing kisses against her skin all the way. With her mind given over to sensation and mirth, she did not actually realise just how far he had descended until her arms, which had been wrapped around his neck, began to straighten out. By then, his mouth was on her hip, tongue hot and wet against the crook of her thigh. As one of his hands parted her legs, so that he could kiss the inside of one, Ruth was brought back to reality with a mild flutter of nerves. This, she had not really planned on. She had never been a huge fan of the act, primarily because she had trust issues and difficulty letting herself relax into it. But, she reminded herself, this was Harry. She trusted Harry. Steadying her breath, then, she did not draw back.

Pulling the duvet down with him, Harry settled himself more comfortably between her legs, hands stroking the outside of her thighs, lips stroking the inside. He was very good, thought Ruth, very controlled. Occasionally, he would dip down and kiss her belly, just above the dark flash of hair on her pubic bone, but he was doing a fine job of appearing completely disinterested in what lay beneath it – apart from when he glanced up at her and she could see his eyes burning with want for her. Huge black pupils, surrounded by slivers of hazel brown; they were enough to make her fingers tighten into fists around her sheets. Each taste he took of her skin, each glance he gave, made her feel infinitely more loved. He was a bit of a tease, as she had noticed earlier, but precise and infinitely confident in his own movements. That was a very attractive quality, in a lover. And she didn't mind the teasing so very much...

After a minute or so had passed, however, and he had not moved any close to her centre, Ruth felt obliged to mention their time constraints.

"Harry?" she whispered his name, voice a little rough from need.

He looked up, midway through sliding his tongue over a freckle, on her left hip. His mouth made a satisfyingly wet noise as it parted from his skin.

"What?"

"You only have twenty minutes left, before you have to go," she told him.

He raised an eyebrow, looking for all the world as if they were back on the Grid and she had just asked him some impertinent question about officer deployment. There was a distinct air of 'I'm sorry, do you not know who I am?' in his eyes.

Ruth bit the inside of her lip, trying to hide a smile.

"Sorry," she whispered. "I just don't want to make you late..."

Harry continued to watch her, intently. "I tell you what," he replied, eventually, leaning just forwards enough to kiss her belly. "You keep an eye on the clock," he told her, kissing the inside of her left thigh and then her right. "If you can tell me when we reach ten minutes left, I will personally do all of your requisitions paperwork for the next two weeks." His fingers ran tantalisingly slow paths down the outside of her hips. His breath was hot against her skin, tongue scorching. "Deal?" he asked her softly.

His voice was honey-smooth and incredibly low, lower than Ruth had ever heard it. The vibrations from it ran through his chest and into the lower regions of her body – up her thighs and down into the depths between them, heating her through. Breathing very roughly, now, Ruth forced out a nod.

"Deal," she just about managed to squeeze out, without stammering.

"Good," purred Harry, returning to the task which he had been so deeply invested in.

Ruth had just begun to wonder exactly how her boss was planning to explain his having to do her requisitions paperwork to the rest of his staff when the question became moot. His mouth descended to the hot centre of her, the flat of a hot tongue and the gentle pressure of a man who knew _exactly_ what he was doing.

He traced slow patterns across her skin. She squirmed and panted harder. He flicked his tongue across her. She whimpered his name. Muscles twitched and strained and several times she tried to shy away, only to be guided back by his steady hands. As he began to move faster, she murmured soft encouragements, but Harry ignored most of her direction – most likely because he knew what she needed better than she did. He slowed when she wanted him to go faster, teasing her to the edge and back again, making her quiver and shake with anticipation and want. Again and again and again.

Ten minutes left came and went without Ruth noticing, causing her to lose her end of the deal. She did not really mind.

She didn't even mind missing five minutes left either.

.

Harry left around nine, closing the door of Ruth's bedroom quietly behind him. Ruth remained curled up on her side, under the duvet, her eyes closed to the sight of her lover leaving. Caught in the afterglow of a rather intense climax, her muscles felt like warm liquid. The softness of her bed was calling to her, drawing her towards sleep, but she could not quite let herself go, not yet. Eyes closed, she focussed all her remaining senses in on the soft sounds of Harry, moving about her house. It was strange, him being there, but Ruth liked the domesticity of the situation. Domestic was what she had been wanting, for the two of them, for so many years now.

As he descended the stairs, the structure of her old house creaked. Once he reached the bottom, he turned left, down the hall, and made his way to the kitchen. Ruth smiled as she heard him potter about, collecting his belongings. She heard a chair being pulled across the floor, the clink of plates as he cleared up after their meal. He shouldn't, she sighed to herself. She had told him not to bother and that she would get it later, but Harry was Harry. Harry liked tidy.

Downstairs, he padded around her kitchen a bit more. Ruth picked out the sound of water flowing, amongst the footsteps and then the clink of a glass as he presumably took a drink. A few footsteps later, she heard him clipping his laptop back inside its briefcase and heading to the front door. The door opened and closed, then the Yale lock snicked into place. Throwing her head back amongst her pillows, she tried to distract herself from the discomfort of hearing him walk away. She breathed in heavily, trying to find his scent upon her sheets. There wasn't much – no more than a hint, really. He had not lain here for long. Sighing, she tried to remember what his hands felt like, against her, hot and steady; a lover's hands but also Harry's hands. It had been such a very long time coming, their collision of mutual need and lust. She felt incredibly lucky to have made it. There were so many times when it felt as if they might not.

Giving a long yawn, Ruth pressed her knees more tightly together. Harry had been between them, not twenty minutes ago. Harry Pearce. A smile tickled her lips, at the thought. Harry Pearce, between her legs, after seven years. Her skin was still tingling from his touch.

Turning over, she set her alarm to wake her tomorrow morning, mindful that she had to get up and prep for her meeting with the Home Secretary in the afternoon. One of these days, she told herself as she tucked herself back in, she was going to have a proper weekend – a weekend that actually occurred on a weekend and involved absolutely no work. Perhaps she would even manage to rope Harry in. They could do that, she thought, giving a little smile. Two days in bed, maybe a walk, something nice for dinner, just the two of them. It sounded so simple, in principle. In reality, however...

Slowly, Ruth let her eyes close again and sleep wash over her. It came in quicker than usual, the dark folds slipping around her like a warm blanket. It had been a long day and the adrenaline in her body was waning. It left her muscles soft and relaxed. Things started to fade away, one body part at a time. First her toes, then her feet, then her legs, passing up to her upper body. By the time the sensation faded from her arms and shoulders, consciousness was already gone.

.


	8. Chapter 8

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_Chapter 8 – Old friends_

.

Half nine found Harry standing on a street corner in the pouring rain. It was wet. Incredibly wet. In fact, he thought rather bitterly, the last time he was this wet, he was waist deep in the Thames, with a Northern Irish gentleman rather rudely holding his head underwater. That had been a particularly cold, wet and irksome night. This was shaping up to be much the same.

He still couldn't believe how terribly timed Erin's phone call had been. He and Ruth had not had the best of luck, admittedly, but to have them wrenched apart in the middle of their lovemaking like that was almost unforgivable. Ruth had been upset, however much she had tried to hide it, and Harry did not blame her. He had a lot of emotional investment riding on their coupling as well. He wanted it to be perfect and everything she needed. To think that his biggest concern, at the start of the night, had been living up to her expectations. Harry smiled wryly. Look how their evening had turned out. It was nearly midnight and he was standing outside, in the cold, miles from her side and the sweet taste of her skin. What a tragic end to the night.

Nearby, a car plunged through a puddle, spraying up a wall of water on a group of youths congregating there. They whooped and shouted, their noise momentarily distracting Harry from the spot, near the nightclub, which was meant to be watching. By the time he turned back, a figure had appeared in it – though from which direction, Harry could not tell. Cursing his terrible luck, yet again, he stepped off the corner, making his sodden way over to the figure's side.

The asset he was meeting was tall but decidedly slim – female Harry would guess, from the boots and the cut of her knee-length trench coat. All other distinguishing features were blocked out by a hood, a scarf, and a hat pulled down low over her face. As Harry approached, she turned, nodding towards the nightclub behind him. Under most circumstances, Harry would not follow an unknown asset inside a building he was not familiar with. Tonight, however, Erin and Dimitri were already lurking inside the building, with two highly-trained firearms-qualified officers. He had backup and this asset seemed to have every intention of wanting to keep him alive long enough to talk to him.

Stepping inside, he slicked the water off his head, undoing the top two buttons of his coat and shaking the raindrops free. The woman ahead of him did not do the same. She kept her hood up and jacket on. Harry saw the security men eyeing her carefully as they entered but they let her past. What sort of establishment this was, that let in people dressed from head to toe in black, with their faces hidden, Harry did not know. Then again, it had been a very, very long time since he had set foot inside a nightclub. They could well all be like this, now. Tapping his earpiece to signal that he was coming in, to Erin, he followed the asset through the door.

Inside, the music was mind-throbbingly loud. Harry followed the dark-clad woman through a crowded bar area, around the edge of a crowded dance floor, and up a narrow staircase, under a sign which said VIP private. Connected then, Harry wondered. But connected meant nothing more than money, these days. All his asset needed to book out a VIP room in an establishment such as this was a thick wad of cash. Giving one last glance across the dance floor, Harry turned and made his way up the stairs.

As he climbed, he heard Dimitri's voice come through his earpiece.

"One man and two women upstairs, half an hour ago. All three returned just before you arrived. Should be clear."

Harry tapped to show that he had heard and continued, counting steps, feeling mildly relieved as the throbbing dance music became more distant and muffled. Fifteen steps up, he came to a balcony, which looked down over the dance floor. By the time he reached it, the woman was already at the other side, opening a door. She disappeared inside.

Harry followed.

Downstairs, he could see Erin and Dimitri making their way through the crowded dance floor, edging their way past scantily-clad, gyrating bodies to find the bottom of the staircase. One of them would stay down there, Harry assured himself, probably Dimitri. Erin would come up and wait here, where he was standing. They would be just seconds away from him at all times, listening in. Not that that would be a lot of help, if his assailant's primary motivation was to kill him. Still, these things must be risked, he told himself, spurring his feet to carry him onwards, to the door which the asset had disappeared behind. He turned the knob, leather sheathed fingers slipping slightly against the wetness hers had left on the metal.

As the door swung open, he was surprised by the spaciousness of the room beyond. It was a private lounge, of sorts, and very luxurious. There was a small table, a couch, a television, a long window, showing a panoramic view of the locality, a fireplace, crackling merrily, and a bed. Of course a bed, Harry chided himself, there were very few things this could be, apart from a high end brothel. He should have seen that one coming. How often had they used these places, in his younger years, in MI6, as asset meeting sites? Anonymity in places like these was the norm. Discretion was their middle name. They were expensive and exclusive and as safe as meeting places were likely to get.

Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him and stepped inside, sliding his hands inside his coat pockets. In one, he had a pistol. The other held his phone. Neither would be any use, if the asset turned on her heel and shot him. But Harry got the impression she was here to talk, rather than fight.

"I take it this is not a social visit," he quipped, lightly, watching as the woman did a quick sweep of the room, before pulling free her hood and scarf.

Her back remained turned to him as she peeled of her hat, too, shaking free long tresses of brown hair. At the back of his mind, some degree of recognition was beginning to spark. He knew this woman. He had met her before – a long time ago, perhaps. The curve of her neck was faintly familiar. Her jaw line, the way she swept her hair behind her ear. The hair was different, but then again...

The woman turned and, despite the familiarity, her identity still caught him completely off-guard.

"Zoe?" he breathed, catching himself before his jaw dropped fully open. "How on earth... I mean what...?" he started, then stopped again.

Zoe Reynolds' face split into a wide grin.

"Harry,"

They stared, then the woman – so grown from the almost-girl he had known – peeled off her coat, throwing over a nearby chair, and walked quickly over to him. She drew him into a hug without asking if it was okay, without waiting for a signal from him. Harry surprised himself by letting her, by wrapping his arms around her back in reply and squeezing gently.

"I didn't think I'd ever see you again," she whispered, into his shoulder.

Harry frowned, her dark hair tickling his cheek. He hadn't thought he would see her again, either. After she had been rushed from the country, he had written her off as another loss. Seeing her standing in front of him was almost like seeing a ghost. But ghosts could not touch and she was definitely here. She smelt of rain and airplanes. Just arrived then, he told himself, forcing his arms to drop from around her and their impromptu embrace to end. As much as he wanted to hold on, he knew he had to let go to ask her what was going on here. She had put herself in incredible danger, to return to this country. But what, in God's most fiery of hells, did any of it have to do with information on the attempted assassination of Torrance Wood? Or was that just a ruse, to get hold of him?

"What's happened?" he asked her, drawing back, letting his hands slide to her forearms. Zoe was still beaming, despite it all. Her eyes, now lined by a few faint lines of age, were a little tearful. "Why are you here?" Harry asked. "How did you get in contact? How did you get Grade A codes?"

"Oh God, Harry, it's so good to see you," Zoe bit her lip then released it, leaning back in and pressing a kiss to his cheek. "I'll explain it all, I promise. I'm sorry for keeping you in the dark but we had to get you here, to talk."

Something twisted, deep and suspicious, in Harry's stomach.

"We?" he asked, hesitantly.

"Yes," Zoe nodded, taking a step backwards, walking over to the chair where her coat was flung and picking through its pockets. She withdrew what looked like a high-spec satellite phone and clicked a number in. "Just one moment, please," she excused herself, lifting it to her ear. "Hello," she responded, when the call was picked up on the other end. "Yes, he's here. You can come through, now." Zoe paused, brow furrowing, glancing over at Harry. Lowering her phone, she glanced over at him. "You have back up at the stairs. Could you please let my partner through?"

"Your partner?" Harry asked, cautiously.

He liked Zoe, he had trusted her implicitly, while she had been working for him, but that was years ago, now. She had been living on her own wits, in South America, since then. Harry knew that fending for yourself was not easy. Sometimes, officers had to make hard choices on who to get involved with. And, as a rule, he did not deal with assets he had not agreed to meet with. Things could turn messy so easily.

"She's been working with me in China for the last two years," Zoe explained.

_China?_

"I trust her, Harry," his ex-officer continued, forcefully, "she's one of us. Ex-Six."

They stood, watching one another, for a very long moment.

"What have you two been working together in?" Harry asked, hesitantly.

"Private intelligence," Zoe replied, with only a hint of shame in her eyes as she admitted that she had gone into the private sector. "We obtain information, as private contractors, to legal agencies. It's all above-board," she insisted, softly.

Harry knew that the line between above-board and below was a narrow one, even more so in the private sector than the public one. Still, he nodded. What else was Zoe to do, after all? She was a spook, turned loose into the world and asked to pretend to be something else. She had been trained in espionage and intelligence gathering. It only made sense that she played to her strengths. Her partner, on the other hand, Harry did not know and therefore could not trust immediately.

"When you got in contact, you said you had information on Torrance Wood," he said softly.

Zoe nodded.

"We know who was hired to kill him."

"Not your partner, I assume?" Harry asked, half-heartedly, only dreading the answer a little.

Zoe frowned, mildly offended. "No," she answered, solidly. "She's clean, Harry. I owe everything to her. She got me and my family out of Chile, when Will got into some trouble. She gave me a job and made us a life, in Brazil, then in China."

A family, Harry mused, that could only make her more dangerous. If she had something to protect, however, it also might explain why she had come to him. Knowing information about assassins rarely ended well, for the informed party. Zoe had a child to protect and a husband, it seemed. The situation reminded him very slightly, just for a moment, of how Ruth had returned from Cyprus, with George and Nico. His officers did have a way of making themselves at home in their exiles. Harry would have drunk himself silly and become a hermit, if the same had happened to him.

Sighing, he directed his next comment to the air around him, knowing Erin would hear.

"Erin, let her partner up, please. Dimitri, stand down."

Zoe's face gave an odd twitch as she heard him recount the names. None that she recognised, of course, Harry reminded himself. Zoe was gone before they lost Danny, or Adam. She had never met Zaf, Jo, Ros and Lucas. Or any of the others. Ruth she knew. Ruth, Harry suspected, she had been rather close to, once upon a time. It was something Harry had always admired about Ruth, her ability to befriend the younger officers. She had this comfortable way, with them, which Harry had never managed. Then again, he reminded himself, she was nearly fifteen years his junior. She _was_ a younger officer.

Zoe shifted, across from him.

"How are they all?" she asked, softly.

Harry felt his jaw tighten. Now was not the time. "Business first, Zoe," he told her, softly. "You know the drill."

She looked mildly disappointed, but nodded anyway.

"My partner has the details on your assassin."

Harry nodded.

Both of them waited, in silence, as there were steps outside the door. They were the steps of more than one person.

"Harry," Erin's voice piped up, over the comms link. "We're coming in,"

A small frown creased his forehead. He had not ordered Erin to come in with the subject. That could only mean that something had not gone according to plan. Since Harry had not heard gunshots or the sound of a scuffle, he could only assume that the there was some other problem with the suspect. Turning, he faced the door as it swung open and everything suddenly became clear. Erin entered, pushing Zoe's partner ahead of him. His stomach twisted in surprise for the second time that evening.

"Oh Christ," he muttered, darkly.

Beside him, Zoe stepped forwards. "Harry, I don't know if you remember-," she began to introduce her partner. Unfortunately, she had no need.

"Juliet Shaw," Harry finished, for her. "I remember her well." The cool in his voice caused the younger woman to halt, mid-sentence, her brow furrowing slightly. Across the room, Erin was looking tense, standing just behind the stoic Juliet.

"Hello Harry," the older woman said, softly.

Juliet Shaw. This explained everything, thought Harry. The Grade A codes and the ghost personnel account they had been linked to could only have been fabricated from within the SIS. Before she delved into the role of National Security Coordinator, Juliet had been running a local branch, for the then-time Chief of the SIS. She had had all the access she would have needed, to create secret identities, clearances and backdoors to allow herself options, should anything happen to her. What on earth she was up to, however – with information about Torrance Wood's failed assassination and Zoe in tow – was still a mystery. Deciding it was probably one of those horrors that would be revealed in time, Harry held his quiet.

"She said that you were old friends," Zoe began, sounding suddenly unsure in the deadly silence after Juliet's greeting. "That you worked together, a long time ago."

"We did," Harry said softly.

"Frequently and well," Juliet confirmed. She made as if to take a step forwards but Erin moved in, close behind, muttering for her not to move, and she quickly stilled.

Across the room, Harry found himself rooted to the spot, torn between raising the gun from his pocket to shoot Juliet in the face and turning to shake Zoe violently by the shoulders. How she could have been so bloody stupid? How could she have trusted a woman such as Juliet Shaw? What had Juliet got her involved with? Instead of doing either of those things, however, he calmly took a breath.

"Juliet is currently a wanted felon," he informed Zoe, whose eyes darted about the room, seeking out the three other faces, searching for one which held the truth. "She stands to be tried for treason, amongst more lugubrious offences."

"Treason?" Zoe breathed, eyes sliding over to fix on Juliet.

The older woman looked resigned to the truth being aired, but Harry also detected a strange apology in her eyes. He recognised it instantly because it was a look he had seen only sparingly – and in sincerity. He blinked in surprise, gaze darting between the two women, wondering if there was more than a strictly professional relationship there. They had worked together for two years...

Juliet's unusual expression vanished, however, before he had time to analyse it. As Erin shifted behind her, gun packed into her back, her face returned to its usual form.

"I told you," she murmured quietly, in Zoe's direction, "coming back here, we would have to face our pasts. You know I've done some things I'm not proud of."

"I didn't know you did _treason_..." Zoe hissed.

"Sir, what do you want me to do?" Erin asked.

Harry's jaw tightened. Juliet was keeping uncharacteristically quiet, during all of this. In fact, if he had not known her so intimately, he might have been convinced that this was not Juliet Shaw at all, but an imposter. Her skin was darker than he had seen it last. Her cheeks were slightly gaunter, too, but it seemed more due to exercise than malnutrition. The lines of muscle in her neck and arms, where they were exposed, were hard. She was not working behind a desk anymore, Harry reminded himself. She was out in the field, the private sector, 'obtaining' information. She was a private sector spy – finally, a title to match her persona. But she had come to him. She must have known he would turn her into the authorities, but she had still come. Her information must be important if she thought she could use it to deal for her immunity.

"Check that she's not carrying a weapon," he instructed Erin, "then stand down." Lifting his eyes once more to Juliet's, he tried to control the rapid hammering of his heart.

Whatever she was, whatever she had done, they had been friends and lovers once. He would not see her harassed unduly. He would not drag her back to the MI5 holding cells to be interrogated, police lights blazing, for all to see. She would be taken back and she would be questioned, but it would be done quietly, below the radar. She would pay the price for what she had done, but it would be done in a respectful manner. She had been his boss once. She had been an officer of Her Majesty's Security Service. And she had sacrificed a lot for this country. Harry would not forget that.

"It would take too long to ask all of what I want to ask you, Juliet," he told her, once Erin had declared her clean and unarmed. "So, if you'll excuse my rudeness, I'll jump straight to the business section of it."

Juliet nodded her head.

"Of course."

"What do you have for us?" he asked, sharply.

Juliet stepped a little deeper into the room, pausing for Harry's nod of permission before she passed him and made her way over to the couch to sit. Zoe moved to go and stand beside her. Harry felt momentarily betrayed, at her departure from his side, before remembering that she and Juliet had been working together for two years now – almost as long as Zoe had worked for him, to begin with. They were bound to have a strong bond, a strong loyalty. Though the younger woman was watching Juliet with a slightly apprehensive expression, Harry could see that there was a fierce protectiveness there too. What have you done to my officer? His jaw tightened again. What have you done to Zoe Reynolds?

Erin moved further into the room, also, closing the door firmly behind her.

"I have Torrance Wood's would-be assassin," Juliet told Harry, plainly, dropping down into the plush cushions. "The one with the rifle, not the ones who are spattered all over the embassy in Shanghai."

"His identity or his person?"

"His person." Juliet smiled then added, "I have missed you, Harry,"

Harry chose to ignore that.

"Where?" he asked, a little shortly.

Juliet sighed, low and long. "Well, if you play nicely, I can arrange to have him-,"

"Damn it, Juliet," Harry snapped, cutting her off. The anger which had been welling up inside him had finally spilled over. He was angry that he had been called out here and away from Ruth's side. He was angry that, after the initial pleasure of seeing Zoe again, it had been Juliet who had dragged him out. And he was furious that she was, once again, playing them to her own ends. Personal gain. Again. "This is not a bloody game!" he snarled across at her.

"I know that," she growled back, her own anger coming to the fore. She had always given as good as she got, thought Harry, it was the one saving grace in their failed relationship. "For Christ's sake," she exclaimed, "I've spent hundreds of pounds and crossed seas to bring him here. Do you think I'd do that if this was not important? Do you think I've completely lost control of the plot? I know this is not a bloody game, Harry!" For a moment, the room remained silent and chilled then Juliet spoke up again. "Your assassin is at 13 Woodlaw Place," she told him, then listed off a postcode. "The house is safe and secured but you will find the key in my pocket."

Harry felt a rising sense of panic in his stomach. All of this was moving too fast. Juliet had appeared back into his life. She had an assassin that he needed, to find out who wanted to kill Consul Wood. And – low and behold – she was giving him the location of her most valuable bargaining chip. What did she possibly hope to gain from this?

"And what do you want, in return?" he asked, with the hint of a scoff. "Surely you don't think delivering this assassin will stave off a prison sentence?"

Juliet gave a wry smile.

"No such delusions, Harry," she admitted, bobbing her head, "I'll settle for a reduced sentence. Three years tops. I'd like to be out in time to see my sixtieth birthday."

"Over my dead body." Harry told her, with forced calm.

If she thought that, she had judged the situation very poorly indeed. They had history but that only meant that her betrayal had hurt him deeper. Deeper than she could possibly have imagined, in fact. He had lain awake for nights, after what had happened in that house with Yalta, wondering if he could have saved her.

"Harry-," she began.

He overrode her.

"This is not big enough, Juliet, they won't pardon you for bringing us an assassin who failed to kill a minor government minister. You've made a serious miscalculation, in coming back here," he told her, jabbing his finger in her direction. Juliet flinched just a little. The sure look was gone in her eyes, a hint of fear coming back into them instead. Harry felt both satisfied and guilty to see it. "I will personally see that you rot in prison, for what you did."

Zoe stepped forwards, standing between them.

"You can't," she spoke quietly.

Harry blinked. "Pardon?"

A smile traced Juliet's lips and she raised her head, looking at the younger woman. "Harry doesn't like being told he can't, dear. You have to voice it differently – make it sound like it's not a limitation on his part."

Harry threw her a very dirty look.

"You can't throw her in prison," Zoe continued, ignoring their interchange. "You need her to find the man who employed our assassin."

Stepping forwards, the younger woman seemed to grown inch or two in stature as she took the floor. Harry noticed that she had grown more confident in their time apart. Fending for yourself, having a family and being partnered with Juliet did that to you, though, he reminded himself. Zoe had been living a rough life for nearly six years. She was bound to be a different woman from the naive girl he had shipped off to Chile, to escape the bars of a prison cell. He just hoped she had come back to walk straight into another.

Harry knew he could not let them go. Zoe, he might be able swing an immunity deal for. The woman who had served her prison sentence was already released. It was more than possible for her to be given back a British passport, to be allowed to return to the country. Juliet, on the other hand... Juliet had to pay.

"And how do you propose to find this employer?" Harry asked her, watching the shifting shadows of her face, wondering what Ruth would say, to know who he was standing across from. He wouldn't tell her, he decided, not until she came to the Grid tomorrow evening. This was a complication she could do without, whilst was battling with politicians on behalf of the Home Secretary, tomorrow afternoon. "I assume you learned of the assassin through backchannels in your area of work?"

Juliet nodded.

Zoe spoke, to explain. "When we captured the assassin," she began, "we made it well known that we had him – that he was alive and talking, and that we were willing to sell him to the highest bidder. We spread the word through some of our more reliable assets and waited for a response."

"I see you deal in more than information." Harry stated, softly.

"No," Zoe shook her head forcefully, her eyes just a little indignant. "We were intelligence gatherers. We sold information, never anything like this. It took a while for us to gain their confidence but, after a couple of hours, the bids started coming in. The highest one was from a man who called himself Mr Jin. We did a little digging, but we couldn't find anything on him other than his name and a few rumours."

At this point, Juliet piped up, perhaps feeling that she need sing for her supper. "The oil consortiums hire men like Mr Jin to deal with the less savoury aspects of their work. We don't know who he is working for, yet, but it is someone who does not flinch at bidding two and a half mill to protect their secrecy."

"And that's only a starting bid," Zoe seconded.

Harry regarded the pair of them carefully. Like it or not, they had given a very valid reason for him to keep them out of his holding cells. They had the assassin which, in itself, would be very little use to him. They might interrogate such a suspect for days, but it would probably lead them nowhere. Men who were paid to kill other men rarely asked their employer's motivation for the killing, never mind their employer's name and social security number. Most likely, this assassin did not know who wanted the Consul dead. Most likely, he would never tell them even if he did. Harry could not pass up an opportunity to snatch someone higher up the food chain – someone who did not kill men for a living and, being a pragmatist, who had hired an assassin to do his dirty work, was more likely to yield to interrogation. Juliet and Zoe had provided him with the most tangible lead they had on the Wood case, since its conception. And they knew it.

As he thought through his options, Juliet's eyes were fixed almost triumphantly on his. Zoe's were fixed too, but with an apologetic air. She kept glancing at her companion, every now and then, frowning at her. It was strange, Harry thought, the dynamic between the pair. If he had not known Juliet so well, he might have thought they were friends. Their body language spoke that they trusted one another. What had Juliet rescued Zoe from, he wondered, darkly. What was so terrible that Juliet had been the safe option? Then again, Zoe did not seem to know what Juliet was capable of. How much had the older woman told her?

"When is your meeting?" he asked.

"Five days' time," Juliet sighed.

"Bit of a wait, considering there is a bounty out on Consul Wood's head."

"We call and rearrange, he might spook. I'm afraid it's what we are offering you, Harry."

And it was what he would have to take.

And they knew it.

Harry dithered over the decision for another minute, nonetheless. Just because he was short of options, at the end of the road, as it were, he did not have to give Juliet the satisfaction of a quick defeat. His stomach roiled to think that she was getting any defeat at all. Unfortunately, if this lead panned out and she managed to negotiate a reduced prison sentence, she might end up being behind bars for less than three years. There was not much motivation left to go hard on her. Her slight had been against a government that was no longer in power to defend itself. Her enemies were either gone or had bigger fish to fry. She had not come back as the head of an international terrorist group – as Harry had always feared – but as a two-bit corporate spy pairing, who just happened to have stumbled over a plot to kill a British minister. He had no logical reason, therefore, to refuse her deal. Unfortunately.

"Okay," Harry stated, dully, "you can run this meet, but you stay in our custody, until that moment. Do you understand?"

The moment he started to speak, relief shone in Zoe's eyes, resignation in Juliet's. It was strange to see it there, especially when he had been expecting gloating. Both of them nodded.

"Both of you stay in the safehouse," Harry continued, "we take the assassin in for questioning and nobody makes any deals that I am not aware of. That part is non-negotiable."

They nodded again.

Erin shifted, in Harry's peripheral vision.

Harry cleared his throat, shifting from one foot to the other. Logically, he had made momentous ground on their case. Still, somehow, this didn't fell like winning. This felt like getting fucked from behind, by Juliet Shaw. He couldn't tell where the blow was going to come from, but it had always come before. Invariably, when she presented him with something good it was to distract him from what she was about to do next.

Well this time, he told himself, this time he would be prepared. He would have her trussed up in that MI5 safehouse, with a double guard around her at all times. He wouldn't take his eye off her for once second, while he tried to sort out this Consul Wood affair. They would quiz the assassin, let her have her meet, then quiz the assassin's employer. They would find out who wanted to kill Torrance Wood and then they would stop them. They would hand them over to the authorities and the case would be done. Finished. Over. Zoe would get her life back, here, and Juliet would go to jail. That was, if whatever ulterior motive she had did not come to fruition first, and kill them all.

He would just have to be extra vigilant, Harry told himself again, and nodded.

"I think we're done here."

Zoe and Juliet looked mildly distressed.

"And will we be kept, in your custody?" the latter asked, indignantly.

Harry turned to Erin.

"I think our place in Hackney would do nicely, Erin, don't you?" he smiled, turning back to Juliet. "Quiet, quaint, a lovely view of the local chip shop."

"I am _not_ staying in one of five's Hackney dumps," Juliet hissed.

"And I don't really think you have a choice in the matter."

"I could hold back on my meeting!"

"And I could throw you to the wolves."

They faced off for a few seconds, but the intensity of the moment was rather diffused by Zoe stepping in again.

"Hackney is perfectly fine, Harry, but we need somewhere big enough for four," she stated, softly.

Harry frowned.

"Four?"

"My husband and daughter," she told him, shifting a little uncomfortably. Ever a spook, divulging information clearly left her nervous. "They came with us, from Shanghai. They need to be safe. If you're taking us in, they have to come to."

"And we need assurances of security around the property," Juliet chipped in.

Of course. Harry rolled his eyes and nodded to her, before turning back to Zoe. "Yes," he told her, somewhat gentler than he had spoken to Juliet. "We'll find somewhere for your family and the security will be airtight. We'll collect them on the way."

Zoe with a child. The thought was strange. When she had first come to him, in Section D, he had not expected her to make it through the first year. Then she had done, and carried it out with aplomb. He had come to count on her as being a dependable feature. He had never imagined her being a mother, staying at home and looking after a child. Once she had become a spook, in his eyes, he could never see her doing anything else. Some of the other women were different. Jo, he could easily imagine being a mother, Erin – well, she already had a child and he knew where her priorities lay. In a strange way, even Ros was plausible, she had been so desperate for something to hold onto. And Ruth, Ruth he could imagine with a child so acutely that it hurt. But not Zoe. He had never seen Zoe with a child. Maybe it was because she was so single minded and focussed on the job. Or, perhaps, he was losing his touch at reading people.

A daughter. She had a daughter and a husband and a life. But what had forced her, from it, into Juliet's clutches? He would talk to her later, he decided, maybe pop around to the safehouse and meet the family – see what she was laying on the line, to bring this information to him. He needed to work out what the relationship between Zoe and Juliet was. He needed to know how much influence Juliet held, before she used it against him.

Cursed job. Cursed life.

"Dimitri and Erin will take you to the safehouse," he told Zoe softly. "I'll see you later."

"Bring Chinese food," Juliet demanded, imperiously, getting up from the couch. "I've only had the real stuff for the last two years and I need a good British fake."

Harry considered making some derogatory comment about her being an excellent British fake, but decided against it at the last minute, making a non-committal noise at the back of his throat instead. Slipping his gloves from his pocket, he pulled them on, turning back to Erin. His Section Chief was already on the phone to someone back at headquarters, arranging for the safehouse to be activated and logged in for an anonymous asset – a safehouse in Chelsea, which would suit four, rather than the poky two-bedroom flat in Hackney. Juliet would be most delighted, Harry was sure.

God, he was absolutely not bringing that woman Chinese food...

Taking to the door, he paused along his exit path to say goodbye to Zoe, reaching out to take her hand gently. The younger woman's eyes were huge and filled with a strange hope. The reason for said hope was made suddenly made clear, to Harry, when she murmured.

"It really is good to see you again, Harry. It's good to be back."

Back.

She thought that her life on the run was over, that she was back now. Harry sighed. He just hoped he could keep her back for good. The truth was, sliding the real Zoe Reynolds back into her old identity could prove impossible. If she truly wanted to come back to the country, Zoe might well have to become another woman. Her husband would have to become another man, too, and she would have to explain to her child why their names had changed. It would all become a horrid mess, in Harry's opinion. Still, if it was what she wanted then he would try to oblige. He owed her that much.

"I'll see you later," he repeated, softly. "We'll talk then." Without Juliet, somehow, he vowed.

"Okay," she smiled.

Harry took the lead in heading out of the building.

He passed Dimitri heading up the stairs as he went down and they exchanged rather exasperated looks. Harry was sure that the younger man also had better things to be doing at this time of night than sloping around brothel-come-nightclubs with wanted felons and ex-spooks. Erin, probably, Harry thought with a wry smile. The sexual tension between his officer and his Section Chief abated slightly, of late. If Harry was a betting man, he would lay money on them having come together. He would not say anything, of course. He was hardly in a position to judge dating between colleagues. Still, he would keep an eye on that pair. The moment any personal relationship started to interfere with the job, he would have to bring them in and have a word. That would be incredibly awkward, he sighed, making his way out, past the heaving dance floor, to the exit of the club.

Security eyed him anxiously as he passed and he gave them a short nod. Erin would deal with them, Harry told himself. She would thank them on the way out and tell them that they had done their jobs well. Then she would take Juliet and Zoe to the safehouse. She was a good officer. Loyal, honest, as straight as they came. Harry trusted her. He sincerely hoped that her relationship with Dimitri would pan out well and not become a problem. He hoped, too, that he would be able to give Zoe back the life that she so clearly missed. And that Juliet did not mess him around any more than was necessary. And that, somehow, all of this would be tied up by the end of tomorrow and that he would get his Tuesday off, as he had been promised. Ruth was off on Tuesday also, he reminded himself, causing an unnecessary surge of longing. Maybe they could grab some time together.

Stepping outside, Harry was greeted to more torrential rain. The sky was streaming, the street awash on front of him. Lamplight glittered off its surface, making it look more like a river than a road. It must not have stopped raining the entire time that he had been inside. Heaving a sigh, Harry headed off through it, towards his car, parked at the other end of the street. No driver tonight, he thought, wearily. Unfortunate, as he was so tired. It was unfortunate, too, that he had to head back to work but it was rather unavoidable. He would go back to work and wait for Juliet's assassin to arrive, courtesy of the pickup team Erin had sent out to his location. The man could stew until morning before he was interrogated, but Harry wanted a good look at him first and a good think, over how to play this. He would have to make a couple of calls, too, before he went home get some sleep.

Sleep. Sleep sounded wonderful. Harry couldn't remember the last time he was this bloody tired. All he wanted was his bed. His bed and Ruth. To have them together would be a fine thing but, unfortunately, that it was impossible at the moment. Sighing heavily, he climbed into the car and turned over the ignition. Bloody Juliet Shaw. Just when he thought he had escaped her grasp, here she came, barging into his life again, at bloody stupid o' clock in the morning. His eyes narrowed, pulling out into traffic.

Bloody Juliet Shaw.

.


	9. Chapter 9

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_Chapter 9 – A proposition_

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The next morning, Ruth woke late, for the first time in weeks. It felt wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that she pressed snooze on the alarm clock and continued to doze on, long into the morning. The freedom to do so felt incredible and was detracted from only a little by Harry's absence. Then again, she mused, she probably would not have slept so well, with him there. It had been a long time since she had shared her bed with another person and Ruth had never been particularly good at it. She was a light sleeper. She supposed it was something she would have to get used to, she thought, with a smile.

She did not actually get out of bed until well past eleven - a novelty which she allowed herself, sometimes, on her rare days off - and then only because she had to consider getting ready for her meeting with the Home Secretary. Yawning, she made her way about the house, showering, dressing, going about her usual morning routine. She made herself lunch because it was far too late for breakfast, and ate it perched on a stool by her kitchen counter, picking through her notes on the Wood case. Her meeting that afternoon was the first of its kind she had ever attended. Up until now, her professional life had been spent primarily behind a desk. A few times, at GCHQ, she had been required to go with her boss and explain chatter she had interpreted to defence and security councils, but nothing like this. Today, she would be acting as a translator, analyst and advisor to the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom. This was huge, in professional terms. In private terms, it also pleased Ruth a little to think that she had been asked for, by name. Generally, in their line of work, her skills went unheralded. The glory of a victory, over terrorism, went to the officers on the ground or to their superior, behind his desk. Harry got the glory, she got the paperwork. Today, she would be getting a little of the recognition that had passed her by, for years.

Sighing, she began to pick her way through her own report, taking in the details again, despite them being already ingrained in her mind. She knew this case back to front and nearly off by heart. None of it particularly made sense, to her, though. Someone had attempted to blow up the Consul in Shanghai. Then, failing that, they had sent a second assassin after him when he had returned to British soil. The only ones who knew where the Consul was going to be, both in the embassy and during the failed assassination, in London, were the security team and the few he was travelling with. Yet, the security team had been vetted repeatedly. Nobody could link any of them to any of the young men who had tried to bomb the embassy. Neither could they make any connection to any of the people who Wood was working import deals with. It was all a mess.

Yawning widely, Ruth flicked the report closed and dismissed the confusion, for the time being. This case was going to be one of those long drawn-out affairs, which ended in an unexpected revelation. She could tell. The assassin would be hired by some angry ex-business partner, whose wife Wood had slept with. A bombing at the embassy, a sniper at his home in London; it just did not feel, to Ruth, like a professional hit over an oil deal. If that was the case then, surely, they would have targeted him at work, or on his commute. An attack at home almost invariably meant something personal. Or maybe it was just a feeling she had. They would find out soon enough.

Deciding it was high time she started off into the city, Ruth started to gather her things and shove them into her most expensive bag. The need to impress her colleagues had never been one of her strongest motivations, when choosing her wardrobe. Still, she had a few things which were appropriate to wear to such a venue as the Home Office. Dressed dark, she thought she looked quite the part. The skirt was a little shorter than she was used to, cut just above her knee, but her long boots made up for it, making her feel a little less self-conscious. With a long black jacket and scarf, she looked almost like the spook the Home Secretary would expect her to be. She smiled a little, as she wondered whether Harry would approve.

Probably, she thought. He liked her legs. He had liked them last night, when they were entwined together on her couch. He had liked them, too, when he was worshiping her skin with his lips. They were good together, Ruth thought with a smile. They were better than she could have hoped.

Tying her coat tight against the bitter cold morning, outside, she threw her bag over her shoulder and grabbed her car keys. Most days, she took the bus in, but this morning she would have a parking space set out at the Home Office. She could get used to being important, she thought, as she locked up the house and padded down the cold front steps towards her car. The street around her was glistening with ice. It had been warmer, last night, and it had rained rather than snowed. This morning however, a cold snap had turned it all to ice, making the world appear glazed. Ruth crunched through it, careful not to slip on the un-salted pavement as she climbed into her small black hatchback.

The car was a relatively new luxury. She had never bothered, before, living so near to a tube stop and having no qualms about using public transport. Over the last year or so, however, she had started to consider moving further out of town. Sure, the commute would be longer, but it might be nice to see trees and grass again. She yearned to look up and see the stars, at night, rather than London's light pollution. In her spare time, she had even been perusing small properties out there. One bedroom, maybe two, with a garden – a real garden, not just a patch of gravel like she had here. Mind you, she did not entirely want to leave the city, just yet, and she couldn't really afford to keep this house while buying another. A sigh rippled through her. It was something she would have to think about, to re-evaluate, now that she had someone else to consider in her life. Harry. Something else to consider, an added complication, a constant mystery and, yet, singularly, the wonderful thing to come of her years at Thames House. Her boss, her mentor, her friend, her warm beautiful lover – he was everything to her.

This was what love-struck felt, she thought, pulling the small car out into Monday lunchtime traffic. She should probably feel a little ashamed by how ecstatic she felt, but she could not quite work up the will power to. It felt so good, to just let herself revel in it, for once. They had spent years denying. Now was time for acceptance.

She spent the drive in to Whitehall running through the details of the case in her head and brushing up on her Wu Chinese, her thoughts broken sporadically with thoughts of Harry, when he might next have some time off, and how much of said time off she could take up, dragging him out to the country to see some stars.

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By the time she reached the Home Office and made the short journey upstairs, to the Home Secretary's office, Towers was in a state of mild distress. The same receptionist who had been on duty the last time they had visited led her to the door, rapping her knuckles across it sharply. Tie-less and irritated, Towers let them in, pausing only momentarily to greet them before shuffling back to his desk and digging through its drawers. He looked like a man who was incredibly late for something incredibly important, thought Ruth, eyeing him carefully.

"Just one moment, Miss Evershed," he muttered, dipping his head back beneath the level of his desk. "I do apologise, I just need to find..." his voice became muffled by the wood.

Ruth glanced sideways at the receptionist, whose name she dimly remembered as being Sarah, and saw the woman give a tiny eye roll before she walked back out of the room. Long-suffering employees were the same in all sectors of government, it seemed. Taking up position near a bookcase, she turned her attention to the titles William Towers kept in his office as the man himself continued to ruffle through his desk, presumably for some elusive file.

"I'll be with you in just a moment," he called out.

"It's quite all right," she replied, softly, glancing over. He was still shielded from view. "We have plenty of time."

"Oh, I know, it's just – Ah-hah!" There was the noise of him finding something, followed by the sharp smack of his head colliding with one of the desk panels and short spate of curses. Then, rubbing his forehead, the Home Secretary appeared from behind the desk. "Cufflinks," he explained, holding them aloft. "I am generally dressed by this time of day, you know, but there was an incident involving a glass of red wine, at lunch. And then the spare shirt required cufflinks and... well..." he drifted off, giving an apologetic shrug.

Ruth gave a soft smile, hiding a wider one. From her scanty experience of the Home Secretary, he seemed a rather nice sort. A little unorganised, but clever enough – more of a people's politician than an analytical one, as many of the previous Home Secretaries had been – but Ruth thought he would do a good job. He had survived the first year, after all. That was the first step to greatness, in their line of work.

"How is the case going?" he asked her, as he clipped the cufflinks into place.

Ruth bobbed her head, "reasonably well. We have a couple of leads. Nothing concrete yet, but we have something prepared to present to Wood, this afternoon." She smiled politely, trying not to think of how close she and Harry had been, while he was finishing said report – how his fingers had slid over her feet, the warmth of his hands on her ankle. "How are things going on your end?" she asked, trying to keep the conversation flowing.

The Home Secretary gave a melodramatic sigh.

"Oh, dismally, as usual. You know politics. Nobody's happy until everybody's at least as unhappy as each other." Towers sighed, pulling on a tie. "The Chinese ambassador wants his MSS team to have access to Six's files on what Wood was running. Neilson doesn't want to share. The Consul wants to meet with everybody at the Chinese embassy. Harry's throwing his toys out of the pram at that, of course."

Harry. Her Harry.

"Well, it's hardly a perfect security situation," Ruth granted, thankfully managing to reign in a blush at talk of her boss. "The two previous attempts on his life were carried out by Chinese nationals," she reminded Towers.

The Home Secretary waved a hand dismissively. "Nobody would be there who wasn't supposed to be. The security surrounding that embassy is impenetrable."

Ruth, who knew Five had broken into the Chinese embassy within the last year, begged to differ. She said nothing, however, choosing to move over to the desk and stand behind the chair set out for visitors.

"Oh, do have a seat," Towers sighed, pulling his tie tight.

Ruth sat.

As the Home Secretary pulled on his jacket, they discussed what the meeting to come would entail. Ruth would not work as a primary translator, there was a woman coming up from downstairs for that. She would sit by him and take in what was said, analyse considering her own information about the case. This probably wouldn't be too difficult, the Home Secretary told her sardonically, just a quick Monday afternoon quiz with some of China's most secretive bastards. They would be discussing the deals that Wood was trying to make, concerning industrial material imports. There would be a lot of information flying around, he just needed her to analyse it – in conjunction with what Five already knew and what the Chinese ambassador's aides said, in their native tongue – and provide him with her assessment of the situation.

Easy. Apparently.

Once the Home Secretary had collected a few things, Ruth followed him from the office and downstairs to the meeting room, where they was treated to Consul Torrance Wood and his assorted personnel. The Consul himself was a small man, barely more than five seven, with dark hair and the most open expression Ruth had seen on a politician. Big blue eyes, wide pink smile, rosy cheeks. He was on the unmemorable side of handsome. As they entered the room, he bounded over, extending a hand to the Home Secretary.

"William! My god, it's been too long. How are you?"

They shook vigorously, the Home Secretary smiling all the time. "Good, Torrance, good. How is Emily?"

"As vibrant as ever."

"And Todd?"

"Oh, just your average fifteen year old – all hormones and rock music." The Consul turned, grinning, to Ruth. "Nice to meet you, Miss..?"

"Evershed, Ruth Evershed," the Home Secretary introduced, as Ruth held out her hand and Wood shook it. "A consultant analyst from Military Intelligence, here today as my advisor."

"Consul," Ruth greeted Wood, a little bashful at the importance of her title. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise," Wood beamed. "Now, Military Intelligence, that would be..." he drifted off, eyes darting over to the Home Secretary.

"Our domestic division," Towers smiled.

"Ah, of course," Wood gave a somewhat bashful smile. "You'll have to forgive me, Miss Evershed. I've had the relative fortune of never having to meet a spy, up until a few months ago. In fact, all that I know about your line of work comes from watching James Bond films."

"The reality is somewhat less glamorous," Ruth assured him.

There was a general titter of laughter from the Home Secretary and Torrance Wood's aides, who had gathered nearby. Their mirth died down immediately, however, as the door to the room swung open again and six Asian gentlemen strode in.

They were an assorted group, all dressed immaculately in tailored suits. Ruth could identify the MSS members amongst them almost immediately. They were a little taller, a little lither, a little less at home in formal wear. As the group made their way into the room, the three security men hung back from the politicians, sticking to the side, scanning the vicinity. Spies, thought Ruth, watching carefully. They were not her kind of spies, however. The organisation to which these men belonged was infinitely more shadowy. Their powers were not dissimilar to the Soviet Union's secret police. As they approached, Ruth focussed her attention on the shortest of the three, a man with a long face and buzz-cut hair. From her scanty experience of Intelligence officials, he looked like the Agent in charge.

The Home Secretary walked out to meet the assembled party, as they made their way across the room, extending his hand in greeting. Ruth tagged along, watching the interactions between the other men carefully. Apart from one of Consul Wood's aides, she noticed, she was the only woman in the room. It was quite rare, these days, to find it so. In the last twenty years, politics had shifted from being male-dominated to an equal opportunities game. Ruth could not remember the last time she was in a political meeting almost completely devoid of women. The discussions were going to be testosterone-heavy, then. It would make her job that little bit harder.

"Right," Towers clapped his hands together, "shall we begin?"

He led the way to the table and Ruth followed, swallowing just a little bit of surprise as the men assembled around him stood to the side to allow her to walk ahead of them too. It was like driving in a slipstream, she thought, as she followed him to the table. She had noticed the phenomena of this kind of power before, when she occasionally accompanied Harry to political meetings. This was a little different, however. People stepped to the side for Towers out of respect for his office. People stepped to the side for Harry because he carried himself with latent threat.

Taking to the head of the table, the Home Secretary gestured for the rest of the men to sit and negotiations began. Pretty soon, Ruth realised that politics was going to be a different sort of game than the one she usually played, on behalf of Thames House. It had different rules and a different aim. As the men around the table began to talk, revolving slowly around the subject at hand, Ruth noticed that everything moved at a different pace, too. They were using sort of language that sent Harry into paroxysms of impatience.

It was a different game all right but, much to her surprise, Ruth found herself enjoying it. Diplomacy, negotiating terms, mediating cultural differences, putting the years of sociology and language study into use; it was the sort of work she had always imagined herself doing, before she joined the Security Service.

Sitting around the table, Ruth listened as the group discussed the events which had happened in Shanghai, leading up to the embassy bombing. The men who had come with the Consul went over the details of his last few months in office and the deals he had been negotiating, on behalf of the British government. Once they were done, the MSS officers outlined their investigation, into the case, revealing that they had identified the men responsible and that they were part of an anti-British group operating in the area – whereupon Ruth stepped in and contested their information. She voiced MI5's opinion, that the three men who had taken the bomb to the Shanghai embassy were just the fall guys, small cogs in a greater structure. They argued around the finer points of the subject for a while, in a Wu dialect, while the Home Secretary watched on, his translator fumbling through a real-time translation. Eventually, they reached a consensus that the matter required a deal of further investigation and the MSS men agreed to share just a little more information than they had before. The conversation then moved slowly on, to talk on the re-building of the embassy.

Ruth noticed that they did not venture into the domestic threat that Torrance Wood had received. That would be dealt with this afternoon, she assumed, when the Consul met with Harry. She would, of course, not be at that meeting. Even if she had been working, it was not her role. Analysts such as her were rarely needed, outside the confines of the Grid. It had never really bothered Ruth before, but it had been strangely exhilarating, being on the other side of negotiations. Some small part of her, deep to the parts that were loyal to the Grid – loyal to Harry – wanted more of it. For a woman who had rarely wanted more, in her whole life, it was an unsettling predicament.

.

They finished up negotiations in under two hours, though the departure of all of the politicians took about another half hour after that – far longer than Ruth thought was strictly necessary. It was impressive, really, how long they could draw out handshakes and well wishes to each other's wives/girlfriends/children/significant others. Consul Torrance Wood was the worst of them all. By the time he was finished, even Towers was looking a little bored. Ruth was the last to receive his goodbye and a ten second shake of the hand.

"It's been lovely meeting you. I daresay our paths might cross again, sometime in the near future, what with..." he gave a knowing smile, "the investigation being underway."

The secrecy exhilarated him, Ruth could tell. It was something they saw a lot, in people working in the periphery of their operations. The people who got involved by accident, a lot of the assets – their eyes all seemed to light up when secret meetings and espionage were discussed. It was the James Bond effect, like Torrance Wood had said earlier. People assumed that their work was full of adrenaline and rush. And it was, sometimes, even Ruth could admit that. Sometimes, their work was just like James Bond. There was death and adrenaline, there were car chases, guns blasting while men died around them. There was excitement but that excitement was tempered with so much more reality than that. Boredom and pain and loss too. And much loneliness. People on the outside had no idea, Ruth thought, as she feigned a smile in reply, giving Torrance Wood's hand a squeeze. They could never know what it was truly like.

Stepping back to the Home Secretary's side, she watched as the politicians drained from the room. Once the last of them were gone, Towers turned to the head of the table, seizing a chair and flopping down into it, with a hearty sigh.

"By God, I'm glad that's done with. I like Torrance, don't get me wrong, but the man could talk the legs off the proverbial donkey."

Much as she agreed, Ruth made no sign as to her feelings on the matter. Diplomacy was best, when you were the new girl in the office. She might be playing the big spook in Whitehall, today, but it did not mean she got to swan around voicing her opinions, like Harry. He had earned that right, she had not. Yet.

"Is there anything else you need me for, today?" she asked the Home Secretary, instead, keeping her tone light and polite.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Keen to get back to Thames House?"

Ruth faltered, wondering briefly if Towers' comments had ulterior meaning, before deciding he was probably just surprised at her eagerness to return to work.

"Not particularly, sir," she told him, shaking her head. Truthfully, she was a little keen, but only to get her debrief over and done with and get home. The debrief should not even be essential, as her meeting with the Home Secretary was not an MI5 operation, but Harry had requested it. His rampant paranoia about his people – and Ruth quoted – 'crawling into bed with politicians' knew no bounds. "I just want to make sure that you are getting everything you need from me," she continued, giving the Home Secretary a smile.

Towers nodded, making a small noise to the affirmative.

"You have been invaluable, Miss Evershed. Your insight on intel sharing, in particular, was greatly illuminating. I'm afraid we politicians spend very little time actually looking through the reports we negotiate for. Your inside perspective was very helpful."

Ruth sighed. "I'm sorry we didn't get a more comprehensive agreement. The conditions they gave us allow them to wiggle out of a few too many loopholes for my liking."

"Mmm," Towers hummed, nodding softly. "Well, it's better than we've had from the MSS in years. You did well."

In the aftermath of his praise, Ruth just stood a little uncomfortably, shifting from foot to foot. Her mind fell, almost automatically, back to Harry and she wondered what he would think of her days' work. It was a little silly, she knew, craving his approval, but it was her natural response after working under him, for so many years.

"Ruth?" The Home Secretary's voice caught her, as her mind threatened to drift off into philosophical musings about her relationship with her boss. She looked up quickly. "I can call you Ruth, yes?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes, of course, Home Secretary."

He smiled, just a little.

"Come now, it's only fair that we're both on first name terms."

Ruth shifted, a little awkwardly. She had never quite known what the protocol was, in situations like these, concerning names. Referring to the Home Secretary as 'Home Secretary' seemed a little formal, when she was talking to him one-on-one. Still, nobody ever seemed to use his surname and she never felt quite right about calling men with his degree of power by their given names. It had taken her a good few months to get around the idea of calling Harry by his given name, when she had joined MI5 and that had been with working together ten hours a day.

"Okay," she eventually replied, nodding her head, "William."

Towers' smile stretched a little further. "Good," he pronounced. "Now, I have a proposition for you. I was wondering if you would hear me out, on it."

Interest piqued, Ruth nodded, coming to sit ninety-degrees from him, at the table. Towers leant forwards, folding his hands atop one another.

"I was wondering," he began, voice light, "have you had ever considered leaving MI5?"

The question was not what Ruth had been expecting.

Though she tried to remain impartial, she could feel her eyebrows slid up her face, her eyes growing wider while her smile froze, in-situ. Had she ever considered leaving MI5? It startled her because the answer seemed so obvious. Of course she had thought of it. All spooks had, at one time or another. She had thought of it more seriously, over the last few years, of course – what with all the strain on her relationship with Harry – but she had never gone so far as to express such a desire. Why was Towers asking her this, she wondered, why did he think she might want to leave the service? Was this more sinister than he was letting on? Had he found out about her and Harry? Was this where she was told to end it or get out?

Ruth had long known that was a possibility. If their relationship was going to be a problem, to the powers that be, then it wasn't going to be Harry who left the department. He was too important. It was her who would have to leave, have to find alternative employment. She had taken this into account, when she had stood on that roof and told him that she wanted to have a second chance – that she wanted to make this work. Still, she had not thought that the eventuality would come upon them so soon. Nobody even knew they were together yet. Where had Towers got this information?

"I..." she stammered, slightly, praying for time while she sorted out her fevered thoughts. "Not really," she answered, eventually.

Towers seemed to sense her unease and stepped in.

"You're very good at your job," he told her, kindly. "I read the report that Harry filed in his defence, during the Albany tribunal. He speaks very highly of your abilities as a technical analyst."

"Oh," was all Ruth could really form. "Well, um, I've been there a long time."

"Yes. Eight years, come August."

"Yes," Ruth confirmed.

This was not what she had expected. Why was he talking about the report? Was it just a segue into talk on Albany and her relationship with Harry? Was she just being paranoid about the whole thing?

"I'd like to offer you a position, on my staff," Towers said, leaning back a little in his chair and fixing her with a more serious expression.

Ruth swallowed, rooted to the spot. A position on his staff. So, this was not a reprimand or an intervention. It was not to do with her and Harry at all. It really was a proposition. Halfway to relief, she suddenly stopped to analyse the meaning of such a proposition and her heart started racing again. The Home Secretary – the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom – had offered her a job. On his staff. She had been headhunted by the Home Secretary.

"On your staff?" she asked, half thinking her ears had deceived her.

They had not, however.

Towers confirmed the offer, expanding in that amiable way he had.

"I'm a collector of intellects, Miss Evershed," he told her. "I like to be surrounded by the best in the business – to make myself look good, you understand – and you seem to be one of the best in your field. You have experience of two Security services, countless successful operations to your name. You have assisted under several administrations so you know how politics works. You are well educated, very experienced and your skills in the language department would make you an even more valuable asset to this department than they would to Harry's." Folding his hands on front of him, Towers fixed her with great sincerity. "I would like to offer you a position, liaising between Security Services, analysing the information and advising me on the best course of action." A little smile warmed his expression. "You can choose whatever title you see fit. National Security Advisor, Defence Liaison – whatever you like best – and I can guarantee that the pay will be better than what Harry can offer."

Ruth blinked twice, lips almost tripping over her reply.

"It's not about the money, Home Secretary," she blurted out.

Towers looked thrown, for a moment, perhaps because she had reverted to his title. Or, perhaps, because he had viewed her reply as a refusal.

Ruth hastened to correct him, on that account.

"It's not that I'm not flattered by the offer," she assured him, quickly. "Honestly, I am, but I don't know if this... if I..." words failed her and she lowered her gaze to the table.

The truth was, she did not know if she could do this. A job on the Home Secretary's staff sounded like her dream job. It would undoubtedly pay more than what she was earning now and she would never have to worry about being shot at. There would be better hours, a better pension, benefits as befitted staff of an important government official. She would still be working within the same circles, as well. The job description Towers had given her was liaising between the Home Office and the relevant Security Services. Nine times out of ten, that would mean the Counterterrorism department. She would see the team on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

It was an exciting proposition, not that different to what she was doing now but less risky and with greater benefits. It was a promotion, of sorts, and exactly what Ruth had seen herself doing, when she had joined GCHQ. She had wanted to find her way into political analysis. Working for MI5 had always been just a step in her plan. She had never meant to stay so long. Perhaps, she thought, this was the catalyst she had been waiting for – the incentive that would get her career back into motion. But could she take it? Could she really leave the team and MI5, after all that she had been through? Could she leave Harry?

"I don't know," she eventually stammered out with. "I'd have to think it over a while."

Towers gave a warm laugh, breaking the tension in the room.

"This is an offer, Ruth," he told her, gently, once he had stopped chuckling, "not an ultimatum." He inclined his head to her, eyes warm. "You have leave to go and think it over. I'd like to hear back from you within the week, preferably, but take your time. I understand this is a big decision."

Realising that she must look terrified, Ruth apologised and let out the breath she had been holding.

"Thank you. I am flattered by the offer," she repeated.

The Home Secretary smiled again, looking younger than he usually did. All the stress really did take its toll, thought Ruth. Underneath it all, he seemed an amiable sort. He would be a good boss, too, she had no doubt.

"You shouldn't sound so surprised," he told her. "You are a good officer, rather underappreciated, in my opinion. In fact, I'm quite flummoxed as to why you weren't promoted years ago."

Ruth swallowed, fighting a blush.

Towers knew, fine well, why she had not been promoted. She had not been promoted because she had shown no intention of moving up the career ladder. She had showed no intention, in fact, of moving on from Section D at all. Her lack of interest was not solely because of Harry, of course, but even Ruth was willing to admit that her boss had played a large part in her career decisions, over the last seven years. Him and the team. He was a good boss and her colleagues were good colleagues. Their work was exciting and the rewards were great, even if the losses were as well. It was the only place that Ruth had worked where the whole office believed, passionately, in their purpose. She liked being part of that. She would miss it if she left. They were like family.

Still, Ruth supposed, working in the Home Office might not be such a terrible change. It would still be fast-paced and security-orientated. She would still see the team. She would still see Harry... Maybe he would enjoy working as her contemporary, rather than as her superior.

Heaving a heavy sigh, she forced herself to slow down. Her mind felt like it was going to explode. There were too many things to think about and not enough privacy to do so. Deciding she would have a proper think on it all, later, Ruth blocked all thoughts related to Towers' proposal from her mind and forced herself to concentrate on the moment. Lifting her eyes from her hands, she focussed her gaze back on Towers, who was still watching her across the table.

"I'll consider it, William," she told him, sincerely.

Towers beamed.

"Good. I'm glad. I have been giving this a great deal of thought, ever since reading that report of Harry's, but I was a little worried to ask you," he admitted, with a sheepish smile. "I know you have a strong connection to the department and I wouldn't like to be a homewrecker." Ruth blushed properly at that, which hastened further explanation from Towers – probably to reassure her that it was not a jibe about Harry. "What I mean to say is, if you want to stay with the team you've helped build, I will completely understand. Although," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "I am willing to throw in a company car, if it sways your opinion any."

The joke, clearly intended to lighten the situation, worked admirably.

Ruth let out a soft breath of laughter.

"I'll consider it," she told him again.

For a few seconds, they both held their silence, allowing the finality of her words to sink in. Then Towers made some noise about having to return upstairs and Ruth hastened to go over the finer points of the meeting with him, again.

They ran through her scribbled recommendations on the information sharing deal they were signing with the Chinese. Then, she answered some questions on how their investigation was progressing, into who wanted Consul Wood and his business dealings off the table. Ruth told him most of what she knew, minus the conjecture, and assured him that Harry would have a full and detailed report for him at their meeting that afternoon.

Once they were finished, they both rose and made their way down the long second floor corridor, chatting politely about the weather, the Wood case, politics, and whether or not Harry intended on strangling Richard Neilson – a subject which Ruth felt inclined to keep somewhat silent about, given her intimate knowledge of Harry's feelings, towards the SIS man. As they reached the stairs, Towers turned to her and clasped her hand in a gentle shake.

"Well, I'll see you soon, Ruth," he smiled. "Do consider my offer and keep in touch."

She assured him, once more, that she would.

"Excellent," he nodded.

They bid each other a quick goodbye, then the Home Secretary turned on his heel and headed upstairs, towards his office. Ruth remained, rather relieved to be finally alone, at the bottom of the stairs.

Her mind was reeling, from the events of the afternoon. Not only had she attended her first, solo, political negotiation, but she had been asked to join the staff of the Home Secretary; one of the three great seats of power in the United Kingdom. Working for Harry, she was privy to all sorts of intelligence, but this job would be different. She would see the inner workings of Whitehall, firsthand. She would be on the inside of the most important Security decisions in the country. She would liaise with both Five and Six, see things she could never dream of seeing if she remained in her job at Thames House. But she couldn't. She just couldn't.

...could she?

Reminding herself not to tear her mind apart before she got home and had a proper chance to analyse her options, Ruth turned on her heel and made her way downstairs, towards the cavernous exit of the building. Her heels clicked loudly against the marble floor as she considered whether or not to tell Harry about the job offer. Deep below the logical part of her mind, down in the place where gut instinct came from, she knew that this was going to upset the delicate balance of their relationship and her old instincts of avoidance and denial came into play. In the end, she decided to hold back, at least until she had decided what exactly she wanted to do about it.

It wasn't exactly lying, she assured herself. Harry would understand.

.

_A/N - Sorry for the delay between my last posts (I've been very busy with real-life stuff) and thank you for all the continued support. Your reviews, advice and comments are all very much appreciated. Hope you continue to read and enjoy! All my best,_

_Silver._


	10. Chapter 10

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_Chapter 10 – Contact_

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Harry did not actually manage to get home, between Juliet's captured assassin arriving at the Grid and everything falling to chaos the following morning. As per usual, there were just too many things to do. As Erin disappeared off, with the rest of the night shift, he was left to corral the Monday staff into a morning of paperwork and surveillance reports. Nobody was less enthusiastic about this than Calum Reid, who spent half of his time complaining and the other half expressing more interest in what was happening downstairs, with the assassin, than Harry thought was entirely healthy.

Downstairs, things were going poorly. Thanks to the assistance of Interpol, they had managed to identify the man they had in their holding cells and indentify what horrors he had been linked with in the past. They had him on six counts of murder and implicated in the disappearance of three Chinese business men, in Taiwan. So far, however, he had not said a word, regarding who had employed him for this latest venture. And, with each passing minute that he was silent, Harry grew more sure that they were going to have to go take Juliet's offer of help – which would, of course, mean offering her some sort of deal in return. The idea made him feel faintly nauseous. Or perhaps that was just the sheer exhaustion. He could not tell anymore.

It remained fairly hectic until around half one, at which point the requests and phone calls stopped streaming in. Grabbing a cup of coffee, Harry took advantage of the lull in proceedings, slinking back to his office, locking the door and closing the blinds tightly. Throwing himself down on the couch, he promised himself that he would just close his eyes for a few minutes and fell promptly fast asleep. Quite uncharacteristically, nobody called/knocked/or dropped by to disturb him for nearly three hours.

He woke to a sore neck, a dry mouth and the momentary confusion of waking somewhere that was not his bed. For a moment, as he rolled over onto his back, craning his stiff neck and looking frantically around himself, he was not entirely sure where he was, who he was, or even – to his mild consternation –_what_ he was. The office around him was dark, the only light coming from the narrow gaps beneath his blinds, where the Grid's blue glow seeped through. His cold coffee sat on the table, next to his couch. His desk was stacked with a few files he had yet to look at. The light on his phone remained thankfully unblinking. Nobody had called while he slept then.

As his brain rolled gradually into gear, he slowly realised what the sound which had woken him had been. A triple rap across his door. Someone's knuckles.

"Harry?"

A familiar voice. Ruth's familiar voice.

His body gave a strange half-pleased, half-nervous reaction, both emotions interlaced with a healthy dose of half-asleep confusion. Ruth was here? Why was Ruth here? He was at work. Wasn't Ruth off? Wasn't she at a meeting? What time was it? How long had be slept? Seizing hold of the arm of the couch, he dragged himself upright, rubbing one hand over his tired face. Wake up, he told himself harshly, go answer the door. Staggering to his feet, he made his way over to the door, checking that his clothes were arranged in a vaguely presentable manner. He didn't think of turning the light on before opening the door – something he soon regretted as the hallway was glaringly bright in comparison. He squinted as it burned his eyes.

The world had barely come into view before a frowning Ruth thrust a file forwards, into his hands.

"What's going on?" she asked, her voice carrying a dangerous edge that it rarely held – especially when directed at him.

Harry faltered, caught off-guard, a little sleep-dazed and a lot confused.

"Going on?" he asked, giving his eyes one more rub before looking down at the file. Had something happened on the Grid, in his absence? Had he missed something? "I don't understand," he frowned down at the file – an asset number, printed on the front, dated today with Erin's signature. "What's wrong, Ruth?"

"What's wrong?" Raising an eyebrow, she reached over, flipping the front page of the file she had handed him open. "According to Erin, there is a man downstairs in interrogation who is, apparently, the assassin who tried to kill Torrance Wood. Apparently, _this_ woman brought him in, last night," she said, jabbing a finger downwards, at a photocopy of one of MI5's high-quality false driving licences which was paper-clipped to the inside of the asset file. It pictured Zoe Reynold's face.

Oh god. Of course.

Everything slid into place.

"Ah." Harry's eyes darted down at the photograph of Zoe then back up to Ruth again. "That..."

Ruth looked unimpressed.

"I was going to tell you-," Harry began, but she cut him quickly off, looking halfway between angry and distressed.

"Erin mentioned it, when I came in to debrief, earlier. She assumed I already knew."

Harry winced. "You shouldn't have found out that way," he admitted.

"No, I shouldn't." Ruth's eyes narrowed. Somehow, it made her simultaneously more frightening and more attractive.

Knowing now was not the best time to tell her she was beautiful when she was angry, Harry kept his mouth shut, clearing his throat and shifting against the doorframe, crossing and uncrossing his arms. He remained silent for almost half a minute, but the tension soon became unbearable.

"I thought it could wait until after your meeting," he started to explain, defending his actions, but Ruth overrode him.

"She's the asset who called in, last night, isn't she?"

"Yes," he admitted, wincing slightly at the hurt in her eyes. "I didn't want to distract you from your meeting and there was a lot of vetting to be done before they could-,"

"She was my friend, Harry. I thought I'd never see her again!" Ruth's voice crescendoed from its normally soothing tones, reaching a decibel which could not have failed to catch the attention of their colleagues, out on the Grid. Perhaps she realised this herself because she paused, for a moment, and when she began speaking again it was in lowered tones. "How could you not tell me that she was back?" she asked, with accusing eyes.

It was unfortunate that she had found out about Zoe the way she had, Harry thought – but if he had done something wrong, in keeping the information back, he couldn't see it. When an asset came to them, with information, requesting asylum, they had to go through a very stringent procedure of vetting and safety protocols. He could hardly have just brought Zoe into the Grid and reunited them. Ruth would not have been able to see her anyway. Nobody but Erin and Harry himself had access to where she and Juliet were being held.

"You were going to a meeting with the Home Secretary," he insisted, trying to calm Ruth down. "It was rather important. I thought you could do without the added complication."

"Complication?"

"Complication, yes."

"No, not a complication, Harry, a person. _Zoe_."

"Who came to me with intelligence, as an asset," Harry stressed. "I needed to follow protocol. Would you really have wanted me to wake you up, to tell you that she was back in the country but you could not see her yet, you could not even talk to her?" he asked, incredulously.

Her lips parted and she mouthed wordlessly for a second, before indignantly spluttering; "YES!"

She sounded exasperated. Her eyes were flashing, brighter than ever in the light of the hall. In contrast with them, her hair seemed very dark, her skin very milky. God, she had beautiful skin, Harry mused, watching shadows shift across it in the half light of the hall. Soft. Sweet. He swallowed, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath, trying not to look like he was staring. She was beautiful and he wanted to hold her. He was not sure what it was, about her anger, which made her so infinitely attractive. Maybe it was the juxtaposition of her rage against her usual gentle demeanour. Whatever the reason, all he wanted to do, in that moment, was pull her to him and press his lips to hers – pull her back, into the dark confines of his office, and crush their bodies together.

This was ridiculous, he thought, washing his gaze over her one last time. Why were they fighting? Surely Zoe coming back was a good thing? He wanted to make it all better, make the tension slide away. Unfortunately, he had no idea what was going on, behind Ruth's beautiful aquamarine gaze, and no idea which words to say.

"Would you like to come in?" he asked, lamely, gesturing to the office behind him. "We can talk about this."

Ruth opened her mouth, perhaps about to accept, then her eyes swept over the room behind him. The light was still off and the want must still have been evident in his gaze because her expression shifted, becoming suspicious. She closed her mouth again, shaking her head.

Never one to be dissuaded by failure, Harry tried again.

"We can't really have this conversation in the corridor, Ruth," he pressed, gently.

"We've managed thus far," she pointed out.

Touché.

Realising that she was feeling a little more combative than he had previously assessed, Harry decided to change tact. Give her something, he told himself, try and coax a little warmth out of her, bring her around to the idea that Zoe is back and that is all that matters. How she found out about Zoe's return should not be the priority here.

"I'm going to see Zoe later," he told her, warmly. "You should come. It would be nice to all be in the same room again."

"Me, you, Zoe and Juliet Shaw?" Ruth asked, a little tartly.

Ah. Bloody Juliet Shaw.

"Yes." Harry hid another wince. He had not been intentionally holding back the detail of Juliet's presence. In all honesty, for a blissful few moments, he had just forgotten about her. "Juliet will be there too," he confirmed. "Apparently she and Zoe have been working together for some time."

Ruth glared.

"God, it's like drawing blood from a stone," she muttered, darkly.

There were a few seconds of heavy silence, during which Harry swallowed, hard. Her few quiet words were more emotionally loaded than all of the previous anger. They summarised what Ruth was most afraid of, in pursuing a relationship with him – the secrets and lies, the distance that would always be between them. Up on that rooftop, on New Years' Eve, Harry had promised it would not be a problem. He had promised that he would not to keep anything from her unless it was strictly necessary and he thought he had stuck to his promise. Obviously, however, the parameters of what he was required to share were somewhat different than he had expected.

"I was going to tell you," he insisted, a little lamely, "as soon as you came in, to debrief, this afternoon."

Ruth breathed out, slowly, and they continued to stand in silence for almost a minute. It felt somewhat like they had reached an impasse.

Beyond the hall, Harry could dimly hear the noises of the Grid and he wondered, to himself, whether anyone had overheard their conversation. Unlikely, he thought. Even Ruth's most heated comments had been tempered. At the end of the corridor, someone scuttled past, carrying a heaped pile of files. Somewhere on the Grid, he could hear Calum complaining loudly to someone – probably Tariq, who was the only member of staff too polite to tell him to shove off – about his paperwork. Someone was using the photocopier, next to the coffee room. The central heating was blowing overhead. Everything seemed perfectly normal except for him and Ruth, who were caught in some sort of stand-off. The irony of it was, Harry would have been only too willing to raise the white flag, if only he knew what to say. As it was, he had no idea. So, he just stood there, in the doorframe, watching Ruth watch him back.

It took a very long half minute before the hardness left her gaze and then it was only to be replaced by a softened sort of resentment. Letting out a heavy sigh, Ruth folded her arms across her chest and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She still looked very beautiful, mused Harry, a little timidly. She was dressed smartly, from her meeting and her skin looked deliciously pale against the dark navy. He just wanted to reach out and touch her, to pull her back to him, but he didn't think it would go down too well. So, instead, he offered another mumbled apology.

"I wasn't trying to keep it from you," he insisted.

Ruth's jaw tightened, then released. She continued to watch him for another five seconds or so, before the smouldering resentment dulled a bit in her eyes. Apparently coming to some internal decision, she sighed again and threw back a grudging. "I know, Harry."

They stood a while longer.

Harry's heartrate slowed a little, into a more healthy range.

Eventually, the tension in Ruth's shoulders seemed to slide away and it was replaced with a strange weariness. "Listen," she began, running one hand over her forehead and sounding very slightly embarrassed. "I didn't mean to snap." Raising her eyes to his, she added, "I know you would have told me, eventually. I was just so surprised, really..."

Harry accepted the apology as quickly as he could and, at a loss for anything else to say or do, reiterated that he had intended to tell her about Zoe – and about Juliet.

"I had to follow protocol, in bringing them in," he told her. "Besides, Zoe and the others needed to rest. They had been travelling for over twenty-four hours when they called in for me." Giving a little shrug, he hoped to God this explanation was good enough. It made sense to him. "I just assumed it would be fine to brief you on the matter when you came in."

Ruth sighed, looking back up at him with a strange expression in her eyes.

"That would be perfectly fine," she explained to him, slowly, "_if_ I was just your employee."

Ah. Their dual relationship as equals and non-equals.

As realisation dawned, Harry shifted awkwardly on the spot. His reaction spurred a change in Ruth's expression, which softened into one of grudging affection. Underneath the anger, she must have understood this was not easy for him. She must know he was trying his best. Still, Harry doubted she could ever understand just _how_ difficult this all was, for him. He had spent the last thirteen years by himself. He had had lovers, some long term and some short, but no partners. He had not shared his space or his life and he had certainly not been accountable to anyone – beyond a professional capacity. This was new and completely uncharted territory and, much as he wanted to make it work between them, he did not have the first clue how to proceed.

"You know that Zoe was a friend, as well as a colleague," Ruth repeated softly, her cheeks turning a little red as she explained herself. The boldness she had shown in the early stages of their argument must have been borne of anger because she was retreating into herself now, thought Harry, watching her. She bit at the inside of her lip before continuing, in that way he was so used to. "I just wish you'd told me she was back," she repeated, softly. "And that I didn't have to hear it from Erin. You could have called..."

Erin would be equally surprised he hadn't shared this information, though Harry, shoring himself up for days of curious looks – as the staff all re-evaluated whether or not he and Ruth were actually in a relationship. Part of Harry could not wait until everything was out in the open. His spooks already knew something going on, of course, but neither he nor Ruth had said anything about it yet. Not explicitly. God, wouldn't it make a nice change if everyone was on the same page, for once? thought Harry, with a sigh. He didn't want to hide it anymore. It was just male pride talking, probably, but he wanted them to know. He wanted them to know they were together – that he was bound to this woman, in all her beauty and her brilliance and her occasional completely confusing rages.

"I'm sorry for getting it wrong," Harry told her, sincerely.

There was a bit more awkward shifting, then Ruth apologised too. "I didn't mean to overreact," she added, her words directed more at Harry's feet than at his face. Just a minute or so on from her anger and she was back to the woman he was used to; slightly timid, hiding her fire. It was altogether startling, the change in her, thought Harry, as she continued. "You had to do what you did and I understand that," Ruth told him. "I was just so surprised to see her face again and it's been a strange day..." Her lips parted again, as if she were about to tell him something else, but she decided against it.

Harry stored the matter away for analysis later. Right now, they had more pressing problems to deal with.

"How did your meeting go?" he asked her, softly, trying to change the subject from Zoe and their argument.

"Fine."

"Have you debriefed, already?"

"Yes. Erin's got a report of what happened. Nothing big, I'm afraid, just a few small victories on our intelligence sharing agreement with the MSS."

"Well, they don't like sharing," Harry commented. "Any victory is good."

Ruth nodded her head, in agreement.

They both stood in silence for a while.

"We're not very good at arguing, are we?" she noted, softly, after half a minute or so had passed.

A smile split Harry's face, warmth blossoming within his chest. No, he thought with a little smile, they weren't good at arguing. They were too reserved, too terrified of pushing each other away to truly vent their frustration and grievances. It came from years of avoiding conflict and tension, probably. Harry had no doubt that it would be rectified by years, too. Over time, they would become more comfortable with each other. Over time, Ruth would be able to air everything they wanted to, without fearing repercussion and Harry would be able to defend his choices a bit more vehemently – not that he intended on giving her cause for arguments, but life was life and they would fight. Hopefully, not too often, but they would fight.

"We'll get better," he assured her.

"Not too much better," Ruth cautioned, a little attempt at a joke. Her eyes had truly softened now. The resentment was gone, replaced by the bashful sort of warmth he had seen in her eyes during their early years of knowing one another – back when she had not known her emotions well enough to hide them.

Harry smiled.

"Not too much."

Ruth nodded, biting her lower lip then releasing it, her eyes drifting over to the dark office behind him. "Can I still come in?"

Harry faltered, momentarily, then realised that the caution he had felt, at her words, was simply a remnant of old cautions that now no longer applied. There was a want in her voice and it had ignited want in him too – but that was okay now, he reminded himself. He could let her into his darkened office, in the emotional aftermath of a heated conversation. He could trust that, whatever happened, Ruth was okay with it. So, he nodded, mutely, moving to one side and allowing her past.

Their shoulders brushed as she walked by, throwing him a tiny smile at him. Taking in the darkened surroundings, she walked over to his desk and set Zoe's file down on top of it. As Harry followed her inside, closing the door and locking it behind them, Ruth ran her fingers over the photograph on the driver's licence. A small frown had appeared across her forehead.

"She looks different," she said softly.

"She is different," Harry admitted, padding quietly up behind her.

The carpeted floor muffled his footsteps. It was something he had always appreciated about his office – the small design quirk which had left his space the only space on the Grid that was so devoid of noise. It was comforting. Late at night, when everyone else had gone home and he had been left, he could almost imagine like it was somewhere peaceful. With the blinds drawn and the lights out, and Ruth's silhouette faintly illuminated in the blue light from outside, it seemed peaceful now, too.

"Six years is a long time," he reminded Ruth. "Zoe has a daughter, now, Daniela I think her name is."

Ruth looked up, smiling.

"Danny," she said, softly.

Harry blinked then nodded, deciding not to admit that the link had not even occurred to him – startled that it had not even occurred to him. Zoe and Danny had been close. They had worked together as partners, lived together as friends. At one point, Harry had even thought they might be lovers. It made sense that she name her child in his memory. Daniela. Danny. He should have seen that. God he was tired...

"How old?" Ruth asked.

"Five, I think," Harry answered, watching her smile widen. "The same age as Erin's girl."

"It's funny, I never saw Zoe with a child."

"Neither did I," Harry admitted.

"Maybe I didn't know her so well after all."

"I think we knew the important bits," Harry countered, gently.

"I suppose so," Ruth murmured, looking back down at the photographic driver's licence, at Zoe's face. The picture was very different from the woman they had said goodbye to, all those years ago – with long dark hair, instead of short and light, with a few more wrinkles around her eyes and slightly plumper cheeks – but it was still definitely Zoe. Ruth had a very soft expression as she looked down. "I think she'll have taken to it well, though," she mused. "Motherhood, I mean. It's nice she had the opportunity to have a family. So many of us don't."

There was something strange in her tone, something almost envious, which startled Harry. She did not have a child, he realised, with a strange twist of guilt. He had two – he knew the pleasure and the pain of it – but she had no idea what it meant, to watch a part of yourself grow into another human being. He had taken her chance of that when he had let her George die and their boy return to Cyprus, fatherless. Nico. The boy's name had been Nico.

Ruth must have read what he was thinking in his eyes, because her expression instantly shifted. Her brows drew closer together, the hint of a frown forming across her forehead. As Harry forced his face back into a neutral mask, her lips parted to forming words but they never quite made it into sound. Instead, she just stood, watching him for a few long heartbeats. Tension fizzled in the air. One heartbeat passed, then two, then ten. Eventually, Ruth spoke, shattering the horrible silence.

"Harry," she sighed his name, offering her outstretched hand with its palm upturned. An offer of forgiveness through contact.

Harry's body physically relaxed. This was not going to be a stumbling block, he realised, with overpowering relief. He had not ruined them, again, by reacting badly. Stepping over, he took her hand eagerly and wrapped her fingers in his own. Pulling close, they stood, barely brushing. Ruth turned her head into the warmth of his neck, her breath heating his skin as she lifted their linked hands, resting them between their chests. Her thumb ran circles over his, rubbing along the edge of his nail, looping over the top and back down again. It was just a small movement, but infinitely reassuring. Harry leant forwards slightly, pressing a gentle kiss against the crown of her head.

"I didn't mean anything by that," she whispered, into the shadow of his neck. "I really didn't."

"I know... I know."

Harry smiled, a little sadly. They had so many demons, between the pair of them, so many horrors in their past. It would take the best part of their lives to assure each other they were forgiven. They would have to learn to communicate and not to skirt around dangerous topics, just as they would have to learn how to argue and say what they were actually feeling. Still, Ruth did not seem to begrudge their predicament. She had signed up for this, Harry reminded himself, she wanted them and all the awkward history that came with.

Slowly, she nudged her face closer, her forehead brushing his cheek. Her skin was incredibly soft against the rough of his cheek. Harry dimly thought that he needed to go home and shave. He needed to go home and sleep. He longed to bring this beautiful woman with him, even if just for the contact. It did not have to be more, Harry told himself, he would be quite happy just to curl up beside her and sleep. Perhaps, for the first time in years, he would not wake in the night with that terrible feeling of having something wrenched from him. Perhaps having her there would soothe his nightmares before they even began. As she pressed against him, he thought it might be possible. She felt safe. And good. And Ruth.

Their fingers widened and loosened, before tightening again, around each other.

Grip, release. Slip, release.

"Were you sleeping in here, before I woke you?" she asked, swaying slightly against him.

Harry nodded, mumbling an affirmative-sounding noise.

"How many hours did you get?"

"Three, maybe a bit more."

He felt her frown. "Harry, you need to go home. You've been in for two days."

"I'm going to see Zoe, soon," he told her, closing his eyes, drinking in all of the rest of his senses – filling them with Ruth. "I can get some sleep after that."

"Will Juliet be there?" Ruth asked.

Harry nodded. "And Zoe's husband and daughter. They're in a safehouse, in Chelsea." In truth, he had not really intended to tell her that part. He was not supposed to tell her that part, as a matter of clearance and security, but it did not matter so much, not when he was taking her there, later. "You should come with me to see them," he suggested softly, finally opening his eyes and looking down at her.

Ruth was looking back up, her pupils huge and dark.

"I'd like that, if that's okay."

He smiled – couldn't help himself. It was so strange, this blurring of the lines, between their professional and private relationship. They would never really be separate, he realised, as she watched him, waiting for permission. He would always have started out as her boss. It would take a long time before they adjusted to the change. In the meantime, there would continue to be awkward moments and moments like this – where both of them were fully aware of how rubbish they were at this, but determined to continue trying anyway.

"That's okay," he told her, softly.

"Good."

Ruth smiled, a brief flash of white in the darkness of the room, and some of the weariness fled from Harry's body. Drawn by some ancient instinct, he dipped his head down and their lips met.

She was soft. Beautiful. She tasted wonderful.

After the initial touch, it was like magnetism. He did not seem to have a choice in the matter as they leant further into each other, their lips meeting lazily, again and again. They started out with some degree of control, but it quickly began to slip away and soon their embrace had become a hungry one. Bodies pressed close, they grew more confident. Their lips met, hard and fast – hungry lovers, denied contact for far too long – as their feet carried them back to the hard edge of Harry's desk. It was a good desk, Harry mused, as Ruth leant back against it, bringing him with her. A really bloody good height. It was probably strong enough to take their combined weight, too. Not now, though, he told himself forcefully. This was not how they happened. They were more than a cheap, quick, sweaty screw, with their colleagues in the next room, he told himself, between their ever quickening embraces.

Ruth's hands found the back of his neck, her fingers working their way across the tense muscles there. It was just a shadow of a massage but it was contact and, having watched her and not touched for over six years, Harry could not help but revel in it. Her fingers were against his skin. Her face was inches from his own, then touching again, as they kissed. Soft lips, warm tongue, wet mouth. Harry's resolve began to slip away, slightly. She felt amazing. _They_ felt amazing. They would be amazing, too, but they were more than this, Harry reminded himself. They were more than a hard, satisfying, amazing shag in his office...

She kissed him again, tongue flicking briefly against his lower lip, fingers tightening against his skin. Their chests were pressed softly against one another. He could feel her heart beating. Suddenly, everything seemed to be moving a lot faster. Adrenaline surged and the rest of the world fell away. All the mattered was Ruth and him and touch. Despite having only had three hours of sleep, Harry felt absurdly awake. His heart felt strong and fast within his chest. His skin tingled, all over. As Ruth's hands slipped from his neck down to the sides of his shirt, tugging him nearer, he gave a soft noise of pleasure. They were leaning back against the desk now, Ruth almost sitting on it. Harry was pressed against her thighs, one of her calves had hooked half around his, desperation rising through them.

They kissed. Her back arched out towards him and their bellies pressed together. Warm. Soft. Good. Fingers gripped and slipped, then released again, searching for a better hold. More than anything else, Harry wanted to be inside her. Her taste and scent was threatening to become intoxicating, but they were more than this, he hastened to remind himself. They were more than a beautiful, mind-numbing, heart-stopping, fantasy-fulfilling screw on top of his desk.

Hot, perfect fingertips were smoothing down his sides, tightening against his hips. He had to remember they were more than this...

Fuck...

It was only a sharp inhale from Ruth, as his palm brushed against her breast, that drew him back from the brink of self-control. As it punctuated the silence, they both halted abruptly in their ministrations, Harry still pressed up against her. For a couple of seconds, they just hung there, breathing heavily and lost in their still-tingling senses. Then, slowly, reality came dripping back in. Much to Harry's surprise, the world had not stopped, while they had been devouring one another. Behind his desk, the clock read a few minutes had passed. Outside his office, he could no longer hear the drone of the photocopier. Inside, his body was no longer tired and sleep-limp, but singing out with so much sensation that it was almost painful. One of Ruth's hands cradled their faces close together. As they panted into the silence of the office, Harry could taste mint and chocolate on her breath.

"Sorry," he whispered, though he could see her face in the half-light and she looked far from accusing. "Got a bit carried away."

"It's okay," she leant in, pressing one last soft kiss against his lips. "I think we are both a little responsible," she admitted.

"I suppose so."

Ruth breathed out, shakily, against his skin.

Harry felt his heart trying to keep up with the rest of him, thunderously fast inside his chest.

"We should probably get back to work," Ruth said, eventually.

"I know." Harry did not want to, but she had a point. They couldn't stand like this forever. "Things to do..." he murmured, against her skin.

They did not draw immediately away from one another, preferring to loiter lust-drunk and dazed, a few inches apart. Eventually, however, Harry realised that his heart rate was not going to return to normal until he had put some distance between them and he reluctantly drew away. Ruth let go. Unwrapping her hands from around his neck, she lowered them to curl around the edge of his desk, for support. Both breathing raggedly, continued to watch each other as they retreated. Ruth's chest was heaving, throwing the shadows of her collarbone up against her neck. Her lips were slightly reddened from their embraces. Licking said lips, she slowly straightened up.

"Are you going to see Zoe now?" she asked.

Harry nodded.

"I said I'd be over sometime in the next hour. She'll have a lot of questions and we'll have the same for her. Erin's agreed to debrief Juliet while we work with Zoe and her husband." He shifted from one foot to the other, his skin feeling slightly over-sensitive in her absence. Mind on work, he told himself, just get your mind back on work – you have plenty of time for that later. If Ruth would come home with him, that was. Much as he wanted that, he was a little too hesitant to ask, just now. She might take it the wrong way. "Are you good to go? To Zoe's?" he asked her, instead, his voice still slightly hoarse.

Ruth nodded, her eyes dragging over him once more. Harry felt them loiter over his groin and the semi-erection he was nursing there.

"I'm fine," she murmured. "You might want to give yourself another minute."

As she raised her eyes to his again, Harry cringed, slightly. It was like being seventeen again, like being seventeen and being stood on front of a girl he had wanted for years, watching her judge him. Though there was a slight smile playing about her lips and only fondness in her gaze, it was still a little uncomfortable – well, maybe vulnerable, was a more suitable word. He felt vulnerable and completely exposed, beneath her gaze. Ruth could see how much he wanted her and all he could see, in return, was the softness in her eyes. He bit the inside of his cheek, shifting to one side, brushing his trousers down.

"Probably a good idea," he granted, shyly.

Ruth's mouth twitched slightly into a smile.

"Probably," she murmured, softly, then added, "I love you."

Harry nearly fell over in surprise. His lips parted, wordlessly staring at her.

To her credit, Ruth gave him a few seconds to acclimatise to the idea, then cleared her throat and stepped away from him, towards the door.

"I need to finish up a few things and talk to Calum about a lead," she told him softly, clearly far less intimidated by her sudden admission of love than Harry was. "Just give me a shout when you're ready to leave."And then she walked out the door, leaving Harry to stare after her.

He would never understand this woman, he realised, in wonder. Seven years of skirting around the subject and she chose a moment like this to tell him, quite calmly, she loved him. She was just completely beyond him; too young, too beautiful, too alive and smart and wonderful for a creature such as him. Too much. He did not deserve her, Harry knew he did not deserve her, yet she had chosen to be with him. His Ruth had chosen him. She loved him. And she could say it, now.

Letting out a slow breath, Harry waited until her footsteps had faded from his earshot, then made his way over to his desk and sat behind it, placing his palms flat against the table top. She was going to be the end of him, he knew. But, he thought with a little smile, he could not imagine a better way to go. Turning his attention to his desktop, he started to tidy up his files. It was time to go. To see an old friend, to field an old enemy, then back home. To sleep. With Ruth.

That simple thought made him happier than he had felt in years.

.


	11. Chapter 11

_._

_Chapter 11 – The Spy Thing_

.

All the way to the safehouse, where Zoe Reynolds and her family were being kept, Ruth could not tear her mind from that last day she had seen her colleague. It had been grey and rainy, a Monday, she remembered. The newspapers had been howling for her blood and Zoe had been scared and so alone, down in the defendant's stand. Danny had been scared, too. Ruth had read the terror in her colleague as she sat beside him, up in the stands. His shoulders had been held tight. His eyes had been fixed on the woman he had loved. And lost, later that day.

It was a hard choice, Zoe had been presented with. Between six years in a jail cell as herself and a life on the run as someone else, Ruth still did not know which she would chose. For a while, whilst she had been living in exile, the latter had made sense. For a while, she had thought she might be able to live happily, one day, as Ruth Bond, or Ruth Wilde, or Ruth Hunter. But, every time she began to get settled, her heart had begun to whisper to her that this was not who she was. She was not Ruth Bond, or Wilde, or Hunter, she was Ruth Evershed and this was not her home. Even before what had happened to George and Nico, she had been terribly homesick. She had been resigned that it was a necessary feeling - that it was one that would fade with years and a contented life style with the Doctor and his son, in sunny Cyprus - but the resignation had made the feeling no less potent.

Ruth empathised with Zoe. It was awful, knowing you could never be yourself again. Perhaps that was why she had chosen to get involved with Juliet Shaw – who Ruth heard had done such awful things – perhaps she was just so desperate to get home. Ruth could not find it in herself to blame her. She was too excited to see her again. Alive and well. It was a state she found very few of their old colleagues.

Next to her, in the back of the dark MI5 pool car, Harry was staring out the window. He looked weary and somewhat apprehensive against the scene of a grey, rainy London. Ruth wondered how long it had been since he had last had a decent night's sleep, hoped that he would get a chance to rest, soon. Her boss. Her friend. Her lover. She wanted to reach out and touch him, hold his hand across the back seat of the car, but Erin was driving in the front and she didn't know if that was ever going to be acceptable, even when she grew bold enough to tell the team about their relationship. So, she resisted. Instead, she watched him watch the city slide by as they made their way through London's rush hour traffic.

She had not meant to snap at him, earlier. She felt more than a little sorry for it – particularly because Harry had done so little to fight back, when she had grown angry with him, over withholding Zoe's return. He had not meant it personally, she knew. He had not told her about Zoe simply because he deemed it the more pragmatic approach. It was not a slight or a lack of trust, no matter how much it had felt so, at the time. Harry had just been in Thames House mode and he had been thinking of the situation like a Section Head, not like a man who had just learned that one of his lover's old friends had returned, from exile. He was thinking like a spy and assuming she would be doing the same. It was one of his greatest personal failings, she mused, softly. He assumed that other people thought the way he did. It was what made him a better commander than an analyst.

They were very different, really, Ruth thought, watching his forehead furrow. Still, they weren't incompatible. Their lust-driven embrace back in his office had been testament to that. They desperately needed a chance to vent their sexual tension, she thought, with a wry smile. It was reaching unbearable levels. There were moments back there, in his office, where she had been more inclined to tell him to lock the door and get his trousers off than warn him that they were at work and this was not entirely appropriate behaviour. She had no doubt that the intensity of their want would simmer down, over time. Or, rather, it would given adequate opportunity to spend it. Give them a weekend, Ruth pledged to whatever chance it was that controlled their lives, and she might be able to resist jumping him in darkened corners of Thames House.

The thought made her smile, slightly.

Laying her head back against the headrest, Ruth ran nervously through what she wanted to ask Zoe, when they came face-to-face. Where had she been? What had she done, while she was away? Was she planning on staying in touch, once this was over, or was this a flying visit?

She could not believe the answer to that last part was that Zoe was leaving again. When Ruth, herself, had returned, from exile, the very first thing she had wanted was to see her colleagues again. In their line of work, they had little time for family and friends so her colleagues had become her world. Returning, all she had wanted to see was Adam's strong eyes and Zaf's cheeky smile. She had wanted Malcolm's calm words of comfort and Harry – just all of Harry and none of Harry, at the same time. She had wanted those she cared about around her and it had been torture, that first day or so, sitting in the MI5 safehouse with George and Nico, waiting, with only a MI5 guard to keep them company. Irrationally, she had felt abandoned. Perhaps that was why she had been so angry, when she had heard that Harry had known about Zoe for almost a day. Ruth could not tear her mind from how terrified she must be feeling.

"Almost there," Harry's voice assured her, quietly, breaking her reverie.

Ruth turned her head, meeting soft hazel eyes. He was smiling at her – not a proper smile, like he would give her in private, but one which was almost all eyes. It was something they had perfected, years ago, in that short stage between discovering that they had feelings for one another and trying to hide these feelings. Happy, simple days they had been, Ruth mused, smiling briefly back.

"Do you want to head right to the building, or park a distance away?" Erin asked, from the front seat, shattering the illusion that they were alone.

Ruth turned her eyes back forwards, catching the younger agent's gaze in the rearview mirror and realising that Erin had been watching her and Harry. Cheeks pinking, slightly, she turned her eyes to the window and the wet, grey city.

"Down the street," Harry replied, apparently un-fazed by her interest. "I hope you brought an umbrella."

"Always prepared, sir," Erin quipped back, swinging the car around into a quiet residential street and indicating right away that she was parking.

As the dark sedan slipped into place, behind a white van which Ruth suspected was MI5 surveillance, Harry gathered a few files together and slotted them into a briefcase.

"I need to discuss terms, with Juliet, after we see Zoe," he explained, when Ruth looked down at them. "We are having no luck getting information from her assassin. Apparently, he has no idea who hired him, or why, and the money trail is proving equally as fruitless."

"You're going to have to offer her a deal, then?" Ruth asked, knowing just how much Harry liked dealing with terrorists. (Juliet, a terrorist, she still could not get over that one. When she had left, to protect Harry, Juliet had been a retired hero, bound to a wheelchair. Part of her was still reticent to believe what she had heard, about Yalta and what Juliet had ordered done to Ros Myers. Still, the woman had been a witch...).

Harry sighed.

"Seems like it."

The car's engine purred into neutral, then crackled off as Erin slipped out the key. Ruth looked up and found her watching them again, but this time she covered it with a smile and a pert, "shall we?"

Ruth looked to Harry, who nodded, and the three of them exited the car at roughly the same time.

Outside, it was pouring. It was one of those rain showers where the rain was not just falling from the sky, but racing towards the ground. The drops were large and heavy and fat, soaking Ruth through within seconds of stepping out into it. Even Erin's quick offering of an umbrella was not enough to save her hair, or the front of her dress as she pulled her jacket tightly around her. On the other side of the car, she heard Harry swear quietly and hold his briefcase over his head, pulling a face.

"Makes you glad to be British, doesn't it?" Erin called, amusedly, over the torrential spatter of water off tarmac.

Harry nodded towards the far end of the street and they all started off, in-tandem.

Sharing an umbrella with Erin, Ruth had to walk slightly unevenly. The younger officer was far taller than she and her long legs meant long strides. Harry matched her almost to the step – not quite as well as he had matched Ros, Ruth noticed, but well enough – but Ruth had to take one and a half steps for every one of their strides, just to keep up. By the time they reached the safehouse, she was slightly out of breath. Her exertions, coupled with the cold in the air, had left her cheeks pink, too. It was a perilously cold and wet morning. So January. So London. So bloody England. In moments like these, Ruth thought, glancing over at a rather sodden Harry, she missed Cyprus and its warm, seasonal rains.

"Can we get inside, it's bloody freezing out here," she shivered.

Harry nodded, towards the door. "Go ahead, Michael is on the door, he should let you in. I just have a quick phone call to make."

Ruth glanced up at the grey sky, then back at Harry.

"Out here?"

Harry nodded. Rain dripped down his face.

Deciding this was an attempt at persuasion best abandoned, Ruth nodded and turned to the door, giving a sharp triple knock. Erin leant in close behind her, her breath slightly uneven with shivers too. They both hovered on the doorstep as Harry stepped away, dialling whomever he was dialling from under the protection of his umbrella. After a couple of seconds, Ruth heard footsteps at the door, then the lock turning, then the bold sliding free, then the chain coming off the hook. Then, the door swung open, revealing the familiar face of MI5 officer Michael Shipley. He had been around for long enough for Ruth to know him by name. They had used him on several high-priority operations and she knew Harry deemed him to be trustworthy. Giving him a smile, she and Erin hurriedly slipped inside.

"Harry's staying out to enjoy the weather," Erin commented, as they passed, "I'd hang around down here in case he wants in, in a hurry."

"Lightning, for example," Ruth chipped in.

The officer cracked a smile and nodded, motioning to the second door, which Ruth presumed led into the front hall. "Go on through," he told them, cheerfully.

Dripping, they did.

It was a beautiful house, large even by the standards of the neighbourhood, and garnished to suit visiting dignitaries rather than the usual lot they kept in MI5 safehouses. Thames House must pay millions in property tax on houses such as these, thought Ruth, as she shook the water free of her coat and wiped her wet boots on the thick welcome mat. The hall was large and marble tiled, the ceiling high. From where they were, they could see a wide staircase sweeping up towards an expansive second level of the house, in both directions. On the ground floor, an archway and several doorways spread out on either side, some lights on and some off. Ruth was just about to ask which way they were to go when a figure appeared in the archway and she swallowed her words in surprise.

It was a girl, of five or six, as Harry had said. She looked the spitting image of her mother. With spindly legs, wild dark hair and huge brown eyes, Ruth could see Zoe in almost every line of her face.

"Hello," Ruth offered her a smile. "You must be Daniela."

The girl did not speak, or move to greet them, but stepped a little forwards from the archway. Ruth was just about to ask where her mother was when footsteps sounded deeper in the house and a sharp voice called "Dana!" from the next room.

A strange mix of intimidation and dread filled Ruth's stomach. She had always felt out of sorts, in the presence of Juliet Shaw. In the past, admittedly, they had little opportunity to work together. During the occasional operation, Juliet had ventured onto the Grid to talk with them. Ruth had presented at meetings, also, but they had never really interacted on a one-to-one level – apart from the first day Juliet had strolled into their midst, amidst the Shining Dawn crisis. That day, Juliet had been arrogant, superior, derogatory and had set the tone for every interaction which had followed between them. By the time Juliet materialised in the doorway, then, Ruth had quite convinced herself that it was a mistake to come here at all.

Erin seemed to notice the change in her stance, because she shot Ruth a slightly worried look.

"Are you okay?" she asked, in an undertone.

"I'm fine," Ruth muttered, as Juliet stepped into the doorway, reaching one hand down to touch Daniela lightly on the head. Standing as straight as she could manage and, somehow, keeping her voice from wavering, Ruth bid good evening to the spy-turned-traitor. "Hello, Juliet."

"Evershed," Juliet looked genuinely surprised to see her, though Ruth could not tell whether it was pleasure or displeasure in her voice. "You're alive!"

The two regarded each other, for a long few seconds. Ruth took in the weight Juliet had lost, the wiry appearance of her arms beneath the t-shirt she was wearing. She looked different. Older, of course, but also more wary. She held herself a little differently, perhaps with more reserve. Then again, Ruth told herself, she had been on the run for the last few years. Exile tended to give a person a slightly wary demeanour. Apart from her stance, however, she looked very well care for. In fact, Ruth would consider herself lucky, to get to fifty seven and look so well. Somehow, this did nothing to lessen the tension between them.

"I didn't think we'd ever see each other again," Juliet commented lightly, scanning her over, presumably taking in everything in her change of appearance. "Myself a traitor, you being dead."

"Temporarily dead," Ruth answered, tightly.

A smile quirked the older woman's mouth.

"Quite the little spy, now, aren't we?"

Ruth did not think she really wanted to answer that one, so she glanced sideways at Erin, who stepped forwards.

"I'll be debriefing you, Miss Shaw. If you would please direct Miss Evershed in the direction of Zoe Reynolds?"

Juliet looked between the two of them and, for a moment, Ruth thought there was going to be a stand-off, then she nodded.

"We'll take the drawing room, shall we?" she suggested, to Erin. "It's quiet and out of the way." Turning to Ruth, she told her, very politely, "Zoe's in the kitchen. Dana will show you the way," she looked down, giving the little girl's shoulder a squeeze. "How about showing the nice lady to your mummy, Dana?"

The little girl looked unconvinced.

"She's one of your mummy's old friends," Juliet pushed, gently.

There was something strange about seeing her with the girl, Ruth thought, shifting awkwardly on the spot. As soon as Juliet's eyes had left herself and Erin, they had become instantly softer, her tone different, somehow. If Ruth had not heard the horror stories, she might have thought Juliet actually cared about the child. But she couldn't. She was Juliet Shaw...

Eventually, the little girl nodded and walked over to Ruth, holding out a hand. A little surprised, Ruth took it, at a nod from Juliet.

"My mummy's in the kitchen," the little girl announced, as she led her away, seemingly emboldened by Juliet's permission. "She's making cocoa for me and tea for daddy and tea for Juliet."

"That's nice," Ruth chipped in, glancing back at Erin and Juliet who were making their way to the drawing room. Harry had still not arrived through the door and the other officer they had assigned to guard the little family was nowhere in sight. Her worries over where he was, however, were rendered moot as she stepped into the next room and found him sipping tea, with Will North.

It was possibly the strangest scene she had ever walked into. With Erin by her side, she had faced off with a years-older Juliet Shaw, to be led by a miniature Zoe Reynolds, into a room with Will North – someone who she had assumed she would never hear of again in her life. After the photograph scandal, involving his brother, she had written him off as someone who used to be involved with one of her friends. After Zoe had left, she knew that Danny had been in contact with him, but she had not known, for sure, what had come of it and whether Will had gone to find Zoe as Danny had implied. Seeing him here, now, was strange. It was made even stranger by his immediate recognition of her.

"Ruth," he jumped to his feet, brushing biscuit crumbs off his jeans. "God, Zoe will be glad to see a familiar face. She's just popped to the bathroom. She'll be right through." Bending down, he scooped up Dana, who had let go of Ruth's hand and bounded over to her father.

Seeing them together, Ruth noticed that not all of her features were of Zoe. The line of her jaw, her nose, the freckles, resembled her father's. Still, she held so much of her mother in those eyes. Ruth could not help but stare for a little bit, until her attention was grabbed by Will North once more.

"You're soaked. Come in," he nodded for her to come and take a seat next to the Aga, which was heating the room. "Take a load off."

Ruth tentatively did so, pulling off her jacket and laying it over the back of a chair before choosing a stool, next to the Aga. The security officer who had been chatting to Will greeted her, before taking his biscuits and excusing himself, politely, to the other room – perhaps feeling uncomfortable being privy to an old spook reunion. And what a reunion it was going to be. Years apart, both in exile, back together against the odds. Ruth found herself almost shaking with anticipation. Next door, she heard a door shut and Will's head turned towards it.

"That'll be Zo," he told Ruth, unnecessarily. "I'll make myself scarce and give you a chance to catch up."

Not thinking to ask him how he seemed to know her, when they had never met, (Zoe must have told him about her, she later assumed), Ruth watched him scoop up his daughter and leave the room. The little girl chattered loudly as they went. By the time Ruth tore her eyes from them and turned them back to the doorway on the opposite side of the room, Zoe was already standing there.

Her heart gave a little flip in her chest, pure delight running through her.

"Zoe."

"Ruth?" she looked equal parts delighted and surprised to see her.

Ruth did not stop to over-analyse it. Standing up, she had only made it two steps towards the other woman before Zoe closed the gap. Arms surrounded her in a tight grasp and Ruth felt a rush of relief that she did not have to decide how they would greet each other. Handshake or hug seemed moot, once they were embraced tightly. They were old friends. They had been through a lot together and said goodbye under terrible circumstances. They had not thought to ever see each other again. A hug was right. A hug was good.

"It's so good to see you," Zoe said, softly, against her shoulder, before drawing back. Ruth noticed that there were tears in her eyes. "God, it's been awful, just waiting here, for Harry to come back."

A tiny, sad smile tugged Ruth's lips.

"I know." And she did know. One day, she would tell Zoe all about it, but today was about her and Will and Dana... and Juliet, the strange fourth member of their little family.

She took Zoe's hands as they parted, looking up to meet the younger woman's face. She was not all that much younger, really. Six years ago, the gap had seemed bigger, but they had both been at a different stage in their lives. Zoe had been the up and coming field officer and Ruth had been the naive new analyst. Their roles were different now, but neither of them were new, or naive. The edge of sharpness, in Zoe's eyes, told Ruth that she had seen too much, during her travels. Life as a private sector spy was not all champagne and high rolling, then.

"I never thought I'd see you again," Ruth murmured, quite unable to stop herself.

Zoe gave a short laugh, looking down, then looking up.

She motioned towards the stools by the Aga and they both sat, Zoe pulling her seat close enough for their knees to brush.

"Is Harry coming?" she asked, softly.

Ruth nodded. "He'll be along in a minute. He's on the phone."

Zoe shook her head, grinning to herself.

"It's so strange..." she murmured.

Ruth knew exactly what she meant. It had been beyond strange, coming back to the Grid, after her time away, seeing Malcolm and Ros again – albeit slightly older and worse for wear from when she had last seen them. The biggest shock, of course, had come when she had learned that so many of the faces she knew were around, no longer. Her stomach sank a little, now, realising that Zoe might not know who had survived and who had not. Not quite sure how to broach the subject, she swallowed hard.

"Has anyone brought you up to speed," she asked, delicately, "on the situation?"

Lifting her eyes, Zoe frowned.

"The Wood case?"

"No," Ruth cleared her throat. "I mean, personally. Family, friends, ecetera..." she paused, biting at her lip briefly as she read the flicker of loss in Zoe's eyes. It was hard, coming back. It was harder coming back and not knowing, though. Ruth knew that. From personal experience, she knew that it was better to hear it in one go, as soon as possible, rather than dragging it out. And it would be best coming from someone Zoe was friends with – someone who knew and cared for the lost ones, as she had done.

"Not really," Zoe admitted.

Ruth nodded. "Right, well," she pasued, biting anxiously at her lip, "if you need to know anything, I'll try and tell you."

The younger woman nodded, a little nervously.

A few, awkward seconds passed. Then;

"What happened?" she asked softly. "To Danny?"

Ruth's jaw tightened.

"I know he's dead," Zoe explained hurriedly, her eyes focussing down. "Juliet told me, a couple of years ago, after we became partners. And I knew already, really. I sent him a letter and he never replied. Danny would never do that so I knew something had happened to him. I felt it..."

They were in love, once, Ruth thought, watching tension lines appearing across Zoe's face. They had loved one another, but it had never come to anything. Perhaps it had just been too difficult, being colleagues and spies. Ruth more than understood the dilemma. They had led dangerous lives and perhaps Zoe had just drawn the line. Whatever the reason, Ruth did not want to pry, now, in her old friend's moment of grief. Zoe wanted to know how Danny had died.

"He and Fiona Carter were captured by an extremist group," she told her, quietly. "Danny died protecting her, by a gunshot to the chest. He was a hero."

And as Ruth had held his cold body, on that ambulance gurney, his being a hero had not even taken an edge off the pain. She could see the same thought flickering through Zoe's eyes now, as she assimilated the information, nodding, swallowing. This was different, thought Ruth. Zoe had already known that Danny was dead. The grief was not fresh for her, then. This was more about closure.

The younger woman eventually gave a slow sigh and lifted her eyes back to Ruth's.

"I heard you lost Fiona, too."

Ruth nodded. "And Adam."

"Christ..." Zoe's eyes brightened. "Poor Wes."

"He's living with his grandparents," Ruth told her, softly. "Harry sees him, every month or so. He seems to be doing well."

A little smile crept back onto Zoe's face, at that.

"Harry's just the same," she came out with, glancing over to the doorway that Ruth's boss still had not come through. "I thought everything would be completely different and, in a way, it is, I suppose. Our team is gone and Juliet has told me how the Service has moved on and changed. I bet there's no one left there who would remember me," she paused and Ruth almost ventured to say that there were and they would, but Zoe took a deep breath and continued, that smile tickling her lips again. "Harry's doesn't seem to have changed one bit, though."

Still point in a turning world. Somehow, Ruth couldn't imagine him ever not being there, or not being the same either. In her heart, of course, she knew that Harry had changed while Zoe had been away. He had lost and learned and been betrayed. He had fallen in love and had his heart broken. He had lived another six years of a very fast-paced life. Of course he had changed. He was still Harry, though.

"He seems exactly as I left him."

"Pompous, arrogant and loud?" Ruth asked.

Zoe laughed – a soft, warm noise Ruth had thought she would die without hearing again. It made her laugh, too.

"He has always been very sure of himself," Zoe conceded.

"Well, he's 'Sir Harry', now," Ruth told her, continuing along a subject which was less painful than that of the others they worked with. "His ego has expanded, to suit."

Zoe laughed again, then the smile faded from her face and she gave a very heavy sigh.

"I'm so glad you're both okay..."

"Oh, we've had our near misses."

"I know," Zoe's expression became slightly veiled. "I asked the security man that you had posted here about everyone we used to work with. He didn't seem to know about Sam or Danny, or Adam or Fiona, but he told me... told me what happened to you," she swallowed, looking a little nervous.

Ruth did not blame her. It was hardly a subject to be broached with confidence.

Her exile. Her return. Her husband's death at Mani's hand. Her choice to stay with MI5. Her strange relationship with Harry. The Albany fiasco.

"I'm fine," she told the younger woman, a little shyly.

They sat for a moment or two, Zoe reaching up and playing with her hair in a way she used to, back at her desk in Thames House. There were so many things which were the same, like she had said, Ruth thought. Yet, there were so many others which were different. Zoe's face was a little rounder, her bones carrying a little more weight. Her eyes were the same, but the lines around them were deeper. She looked like she had aged one year for every two of Ruth's. A hard life, Ruth mused, wondering what it had entailed – wondering if Zoe would ever be able to tell her or if her deal with Harry precluded her from divulging her activities during her exile.

Eventually, Ruth plucked up the confidence to continue, with their conversation.

Slowly, a little hesitantly at first, she gave her old friend an overview of what had happened, while she was away. She told her about Cotterdam and about being set up, by Mace. She told her how she had been forced to choose between herself and Harry and gave her the logical reason why she had chosen Harry – though she noticed that Zoe's eyes passed a little too intently over her face while she did so. (The woman was a spook, after all, she knew that there was more to Ruth and Harry than Ruth was making out). She told Zoe about her exile, too.

It was the first time she had told anyone, excepting Harry of course, where she had gone. The rest of her colleagues had left the subject well alone but Ruth surmised that Zoe would understand what she had gone through in a way they could not. Losing a colleague, a family member or a friend was not the same as losing yourself. It was an altogether slower and more intimate form of grief. Ruth had suffered it, as she had wandered the Mediterranean, searching for absolution amongst strangers. Zoe had suffered it, too, in her own way. Though she had Will and her daughter, Ruth could tell there was something more Zoe craved. Identity, purpose, the spy thing.

They had all been drawn to what they did for a reason. They all had that craving, the urge for identity and purpose. Ironically enough, in a profession where they used false names all the time, there was a great sense of identity, working for the Security Services. You knew who you were and what you were meant to stand for. That surety was the reason a lot of them had become spooks and it was not a reason which could be quelled by giving them another passport and another name – by sending them out of the country. Zoe had tried to solve her urge by working in corporate espionage, but it was not the same, Ruth reasoned. It had not dulled the joy that flickered in her eyes, whenever Ruth's story brought them back onto the subject of Thames House and MI5.

"After the tribunal," Ruth continued, finished, summing up her synopsis of the last six years, "Harry was reinstated, to deal with a problem with the Russians which ended up falling through." She decided to leave out the details. If Zoe stayed around, she could fill her in later. If not, she did not need to know how much the pair of them had suffered at the Gavrik's hands. "One near miss later and a couple months later, here we are."

Zoe's eyes danced across her face, a strange emotion lurking in them. A little tease, perhaps.

"Together?" she asked.

Ruth blushed.

"Pardon?"

"You and Harry," Zoe said, a little more cautiously, this time. "From the way you talk about him, I'm assuming you two are more than just colleagues, now?"

It was the first time Ruth had been asked outright, by anyone she worked with, ever. It threw her almost as it had thrown her when Malcolm approached her, the day after their first date.

Being a great one for panicking, Ruth felt her throat tighten and her chest squeeze, at Zoe's words. After a moment, however, her more mature mind managed to control it. Unlike what had happened, with Malcolm, she did not reply as quickly as she could. She bit her tongue, holding back the excuses and the get-out clauses, holding back from what she could have said, to make her feel more comfortable in the short term and more awful in the long. Taking a deep breath, she told the truth.

"It's complicated," she told Zoe, eventually. "We've been through a lot, together."

It was the sort of diplomatic answer she was used to using, at work. It felt strange to apply it to them, but it sort of worked. Zoe's mouth gave a little twitch and she nodded. Ruth's cheeks flushed a little more red but, after a long moment of analysing the situation, she realised that the smile on Zoe's face was one of pleasure than of amusement at them and the tension in her chest eased off a little.

"But yes," she admitted, softly, not quite meeting her old friend's eyes. "We are. Sort of."

In her peripheral vision, Zoe nodded.

"Good. Someone has to keep him grounded."

Ruth laughed, her mirth as much from relief as from Zoe's comment. "Oh god, no," she shook her head. "It's far too recent for any of that. Honestly, we have no idea what to do with each other, yet," she blurted out. It felt so good to finally tell someone, to finally spill some of what she was feeling inside, that it took her a good few seconds after the words had left her lips to realise what that sort of sounded like. Her cheeks flushed even brighter. "Not like that, I mean, it's all very new and neither of us are really used to it..." She cleared her throat, folding her hands in her lap.

Zoe was watching her, fondly.

"But he makes you happy?"

Well, thought Ruth, he doesn't make me cry anymore.

She nodded.

"Good," Zoe smiled. "Then I'm happy for both of you."

Ruth shifted, slightly, in her seat, caught between mind-numbingly embarrassed and pleased. "Zoe," she began, eventually, "I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything, to the other officers. Me and Harry aren't exactly a secret but it's all a bit new and we haven't really told anyone yet..." she trailed off, to Zoe's nod.

"My lips are sealed."

Ruth breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank you."

"Well, that's what we old spies are good at, aren't we?" Zoe smiled. "Secrets,"

Secrets and sacrifice, though Ruth, a little sadly.

A few moment passed in comfortable silence, then Zoe asked her, softly, "So, how long have you two been together?"

Human beings were so strange, Ruth mused again. Of all the things Zoe wanted to know about, upon returning to the world she had left behind, it was their relationship. What she and Harry had done, she wondered, to inspire such interest? Ruth was not sure. Perhaps it was the illicit edge to it. He was her boss. She was his employee who had sacrificed her life for him, who had given up her second life to come back to him, who had given up everything else to remain by his side. Perhaps it was because they had survived, against the odds. Most likely, Zoe just wanted to revel in the human interactions of people she knew. Ruth remembered asking Malcolm in great detail about his life, when she returned. In the midst of all the confusion and fear, regarding her family and Harry, she had just wanted to hear about someone familiar doing normal, human things.

"Last week," Ruth admitted, caught somewhere between crippling embarrassment, about sharing such personal information, and delight at finally getting to share. "New Years, about."

Zoe's eyebrows lifted, slightly.

"So you've been mooning over each other for six years?"

Ruth grimaced.

Admittedly, put that way, it did sound rather silly. Silly and pathetic. Six bloody years.

"Well, I was away for two," she mumbled, in excuse. "And we were hardly mooning over each other as early as when you left."

Her old friend raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

Not quite able to remember when she had started to fall in love with Harry, Ruth decided not to contest the matter. To be honest, Zoe was probably right. Their colleagues probably had noticed what was growing between them before she or Harry had. The looks, the glances, the way they allowed each other special treatment; it was only once she had realised that she was falling for him that she had noticed they even did any of those things. Not to mention how long they held gazes. Ruth grimaced, slightly. They had hardly been subtle, in the earliest days of their attraction. It made her cheeks feel hot again, just thinking about it.

Deciding to quickly change the subject, Ruth redirected conversation towards Daniela.

"I met your daughter," she told Zoe.

Zoe's expression shifted instantly, from amusement to pride.

"Dana."

"She's beautiful," Ruth told her. "Looks a lot like you."

"Thank you," Zoe nodded her head, looking suddenly a bit shy.

It was strange what people got bashful over, thought Ruth. Zoe looked every bit as coy, talking about her little girl, as Ruth had been when talking about her strange, on-off, elongated relationship with Harry. What she had to be bashful about Dana for, however, Ruth could not possibly imagine. Perhaps it was simply bashful over how much pride the child filled her with. Ruth had only begun to feel attached to Nico that way in the months before he was taken from her. She had never had a child long enough to understand the true feeling of it. Perhaps this was just a natural response. Something maternal and protective that Ruth would never have the chance to learn.

"How old is Dana?" she asked, trying to draw her mind off of her own failings as a woman and onto Zoe's successes. "Harry said she was five, but she's quite tall for five."

"Five and a half, really, but she is tall," Zoe admitted. "I was too, at her age. All skinny legs and knobbly knees."

Ruth smiled. "She seems lovely."

"She is."

"Not wanting to assume," Ruth explained, before she asked, "but is Will her father?"

Zoe nodded again, with a hint of a smile.

"Yes. He's brilliant with her. They are the best of friends, really."

"Did you two marry?"

"Yes," Zoe looked down at her finger, Ruth's eyes following hers. There was a white band of pale skin on her ring finger, but she was not wearing the ring itself. "Everything personal went into storage when we came over, I'm afraid, including the ring. I assure you, however, it is suitably beautiful." She looked back up, with a smile which reminded Ruth of the smiles she used to give, when they were younger and things were simpler. "We got married on a beach, in Chile, just the two of us and a minister. Very romantic."

"I'm glad it worked out for you."

A strange look passed across Zoe's face.

"I think Danny had a lot to do with it."

Suddenly, the mood in the room chilled, slightly. Both women drifted off, in memories of the colleague they had lost. Ruth knew she had no right to consider him a friend like he had been to Zoe but, in the months following her departure, they had become closer. Danny had been the one she had gone to talk to. They had brought each other tea, on the Grid, in the mornings. They had sometimes shared a taxi home, at the end of a busy day. He had been a good friend and she had been forced to listen to him die – held his cold body afterwards.

"I'm sorry you never got to see him again," Ruth admitted, softly. "I know how much he missed you."

"I missed him too."

They sat for another few seconds, then loud footsteps announced Harry's arrival and their strange heart-to-heart was cut short.

The strange coolness in the air vanished as Harry stepped through the archway, to the kitchen. As she saw him, Zoe's face lit up and she bounced out of her seat. With a soft utterance of each other's names, they strode towards each other. They met a few feet from Ruth and there was a semi-awkward moment where Harry looked like he might shake her hand, before letting her wrap her arms around him in a hug. They stood for a good five seconds or so, embraced, before they drew apart again, Harry giving Zoe a short kiss on the cheek. Only then did he turn to Ruth.

"Everything okay?" he asked, with a small smile.

She nodded.

"Erin's interrogating Juliet in the drawing room – or vice versa."

"I'd run with the latter," Harry commented, dryly. "Erin's tough, but I don't fancy her chances."

Ruth smothered a smile. "She said they would be ten minutes or so. I think they'll want you in soon, for the negotiation bit."

Harry sighed, wearily.

Zoe glanced between them and Ruth worried, for a moment, that she was going to make some comment about their relationship, but she didn't.

"Thank you for coming," the younger woman told Harry, instead, as he turned back towards her. "I know things must be very busy, at the moment."

There was never any question of him coming, thought Ruth, watching Harry smile back. Whatever his personal failings, he was the most loyal boss Ruth had ever had. He cared more than he let on about his colleagues and he would protect them in every way he could against the horrors they faced. Ruth knew he took it very harshly when he could not protect them. When they were hurt, or damaged, or killed, Harry maintained a strong front. Later, though, when he was on his own, or it was just him and Ruth, he would let the pain show a little more. It was in the little movements, she thought, thinking of his tight shoulders and tense forehead, the day they all said goodbye to Zoe. He felt responsible for what had happened to her. He would have taken the punishment himself if he could have. There was no way he would not have come, tonight, to see her. There was love there – that strange, distant, protective sort of love that Harry was so good at.

Zoe seemed to understand. Moving back to her seat, she beckoned him to join them. Harry declined, choosing to stand on front of his two officers. Sliding his hands into his pockets, he looked more tired than he had in a good while. The fact that he was soaked through didn't make it any better, thought Ruth, trying to quell a fond smile. Poor Harry. He needed a good night's sleep and, preferably, a few days off.

"It's good to see you," her boss started, smiling apologetically at Zoe. "I'm sorry we didn't have a chance to talk, last night."

Zoe shook her head. "I understand. Besides," she cricked a smile, "we were all exhausted. I don't think Juliet had slept in over three days."

Harry's eyes hardened, significantly.

"How did you meet Juliet?" he asked, voice slightly cool. "And what, if you don't mind me asking, is the nature of your relationship?"

Ruth sensed a turning point in the conversation and steeled herself, in her seat. Across the way, Zoe did the same. Her eyes were cautious, but there was a strange sort of protectiveness there too, a similar look to the one she had worn when she had talked about her daughter. Harry should tread carefully, Ruth thought. However the relationship between Zoe and Juliet had started, it was a strong one. They clearly meant something to each other – however hard that was for Harry to believe. Then again, Ruth reasoned, many relationships were confusing from the outside. To a lot of people, her love for Harry would seem completely unfounded. He was a killer and a spy, renowned in many circles as being a cold-hearted bastard. They wouldn't make sense to an outsider either. Somehow, however, Ruth didn't really think this would change Harry's opinion on the matter. He had been hurt by Juliet and he still carried a lot of rage for what she had done, with Yalta.

In the chair next to Ruth, Zoe shifted, uncomfortably.

Harry watched her, his gaze unyielding, demanding answers.

Eventually, there seemed to be a break in the face-off. Zoe sighed heavily. Harry folded his arms.

"She saved me," the returned officer said, quietly, to her one-time boss. "Juliet saved my family and offered me a future. She offered me protection and she was my friend when everybody else I had ever known or cared about had abandoned me." A sad little smile twitched her lips. "_That_ is the nature of our relationship, Harry. We are friends."

Harry got a very fixed look.

This, thought Ruth with a sigh, was going to be a very long evening.

.


	12. Chapter 12

.

_Chapter 12 – Mind Games_

.

It wouldn't matter how much Zoe insisted, Harry decided, he could not imagine Juliet Shaw ever having friends. People she used, yes. People she appreciated, of course. But not friends. Women like Juliet Shaw did not have friends. Harry had found that out, to his and Ros Myers' almost-peril. She used people for what they could give her, treated them well whilst they were of value, then discarded and betrayed them. That is what women like Juliet Shaw did. She was not a friend, not a saviour, and not selfless. So what on earth was her game, with Zoe Reynolds.

"I know you don't believe me," the young woman told him, wearily, folding her hands in her lap. "But its the truth. We are friends."

Next to her, Ruth's eyes were darting towards him then away again. Perhaps she believed Zoe, Harry wondered, glancing down at his employee/partner/almost-lover and wondering what was going on in her mind. Perhaps she thought he was being unreasonable. Well, she had not seen firsthand what had happened, with Yalta, Harry told himself firmly. She did not know the extent of Juliet's betrayal and depravity. She could not judge a woman who she did not entirely know as accurately as Harry could. Juliet Shaw was bad news and – as devastated as he was that Zoe had become involved with her – he was going to have to put that above their relationship, for now, and figure out exactly how much damage Juliet had caused.

"How long ago did you meet?" he asked Zoe, his tone as neutral as he could manage. She already knew how he felt about Juliet, from last night, but he was not going to antagonise the situation unduly.

"September 2005," she answered, "almost a year after I arrived in Chile. Will lost his job a few months before and we were struggling for money. Dana was just a baby at the time and we honestly didn't know what we were going to do..."

Juliet, striking while the opposition was weak as usual, thought Harry.

"Juliet got in contact with me via a government official," Zoe continued. "At the time, I thought she was working for our government. When we met, however, she told me what had happened – that she had been exiled for an offence she committed in what she thought was the country's best interest." Harry's lips parted, about to snap something in reply to that, but Zoe's eyes lifted warningly to his. "She told me everything I didn't know about what happened with Yalta last night, Harry. I don't condone it any more than you do but Juliet's integrity is a separate issue and not relevant to this discussion."

There was an awkward silence after her pronouncement. To Harry's left, Ruth shifted around a bit more. She looked as if she might have some input, on the subject, but Harry did not ask for it. He wasn't really interested in hearing how emotionally biased he was. He knew that he was not impartial on the matter. He didn't need to hear it from her who – he selfishly added, to himself – should really be on his side of this argument. She knew what Juliet had done.

"What did she offer you?" Harry asked, tautly.

"A job," Zoe replied. "She offered me a ticket to Rio de Janeiro and a job for three months. She was doing some surveillance work on an oil executive for his own company. They thought he might be batting for the other team and were worried about lost profits due to information leaks."

"And you accepted?"

Zoe looked slightly offended. "We had no money and a three month old child, Harry!"

Desperate times and desperate measures. Still, thought Harry, she must have known that getting involved with Juliet was a slippery slope.

"What happened next?" he asked her.

"At the end of the job, Juliet offered me a more permanent position." Zoe shifted, a slight frown appearing across her brow. "I accepted, in exchange for clean passports for my family and a stable income. We stayed in Rio for another six months then work took us south, to Sau Paulo. We spent some time in Argentina, then Beijing, then moved across to Shanghai last July."

"So you were only in the city a couple of months before finding out about Torrance Wood's assassin?" Harry asked, eager to ground Zoe's timeline in one he knew, inside out – the assassination attempt on Torrance Wood and his subsequent removal from the Shanghai embassy.

Zoe nodded.

"We were doing work for a multinational, at the time, investigating a break in their security. The leak turned out to be a young guard who was willing to sell out everyone he had ever known in return for our not turning him over to the relevant authorities." Harry's heart sank in his chest for a moment. Zoe must have read what he was thinking, because she added, a tad snappily. "We did turn him over, incidentally – but only after we had extracted information on his friends in dark places."

"One being our assassin?"

"One being the brother of our assassin, a British national, who told us his brother had been paid fifty thousand to catch a flight to London and dispose of Torrance Wood."

"Naturally, you told the relevant authorities?" Harry suggested, hoping against hope that she would say yes.

Zoe shifted, a little uncomfortably.

"No. We had no proof save word of a man who was less than reputable."

"But you believed him?"

"Yes."

Harry watched her closely.

A few seconds passed in uncomfortable silence.

"Juliet believed him," Zoe rephrased, her voice low and weary. "And I saw an opportunity, to get home. As it turned out, he was telling the truth. We followed the brother to London and caught him trying to make good on his escape from the country, following the failed attempt on Torrance Wood's life. The rest, as they say, is history."

Suddenly, she sounded so hopeless that Harry's resolve to treat her strictly (for teaming up with Juliet) just faded away. She was thirty two years old, he reminded himself. It was not that old, in the grand scheme of things. At twenty two, thirty-two seemed like some distant point in the future but, from his perch rather further up the age ladder, Harry could see that Zoe was still very young. And she had already been forced to make some very difficult choices. She had already loved and lost so much. And, whatever she had done, she was still his officer. He had a responsibility here.

Her eyes lifted to his, a little pleading.

"We can bring you the man who hired the assassin, Harry. Just talk to the Home Secretary. Explain what's happened and appeal to his better nature."

Harry was fairly sure that even William Towers' better nature would not help Juliet Shaw. But, as it might help Zoe Reynolds, he nodded.

"I can try," he told her.

"I just want my daughter to have a home, somewhere." Zoe turned to Ruth, this time, perhaps sensing that her plea would have better luck if she directed it to someone else with maternal instincts. "She's already asking why we have to keep moving around and why we don't have a house. She's school age this year and I want to be able to settle somewhere. I want to have a last name to give her that doesn't have to keep changing."

Harry understood, of course. He knew what it was like to feel protective over a young life he had created. He had two children, who were never all that far from his thoughts. Whatever they thought about what kind of father he had been, he had always loved them. Sometimes, he had had a really shitty way of showing it, but the love had always been there. And he had wanted the best for them. He might have done what Zoe had done too, he realised, watching her and Ruth hold a long gaze. He might well have sacrificed a little of his integrity, too, to give his child a better life. Knowing that made the situation even more confusing.

Running one hand over his tired face, he sighed.

"I'll try," he told her, again, a little softer this time. "The Home Secretary is a compassionate man. I'm sure there is grounds, here, for your appeal."

Zoe looked back to him, giving a wry little smile.

"Providing I get you a conviction for the man who tried to kill Torrance Wood?"

Yes.

Harry shuffled his feet. "I will see what I can arrange."

Zoe sighed then stood up, taking a step towards him.

"I understand, Harry," she looked suddenly apologetic. "What we've asked from you isn't easy. We both understand that."

Both? Somehow, Harry doubted Juliet would be as sympathetic to his plight as Zoe.

"I'll talk with Juliet and Erin, then make the call to Towers," he assured her, anyway. He would do what he could for Zoe Reynolds. After all, he had not done nearly enough the first time around.

.

They continued to talk for a while – running over security for the Chelsea house, then again over what Juliet and Zoe planned to do, to entrap their assassin's employer – then Harry departed the room again, leaving Ruth and Zoe to get on with whatever they had been discussing when he had arrived. Zoe's daughter, most likely. They deserved some time alone, he reasoned, as he walked away from the warmth of the kitchen into the colder interior of the house. They had been friends, as Ruth had said, and they had been parted a long time. They had a lot to talk about. They had a lot to empathise over, as well, Harry remembered. Both of them had been put into exile. He just hoped Ruth would be kind when she retold the tale of what had brought her back.

Making his way through the hallway of the large house, he pondered how he was going to go about convincing the Home Secretary of Zoe's validity to return to the country. Earlier that afternoon, he had prepared a draft proposal, substantiated by a report on the work Zoe had done, while she had worked for MI5, and an outline of what she would require to legally return. There was a whole section of the report dedicated to his decisions, surrounding why he had sent her off to Chile in the first place. William Towers was going to be far from amused when he read it. He had already saved Harry from one embarrassing scandal, after all. This one might push him over the edge, to fire the Section Head. But Harry knew he had to try. For Zoe's sake.

Making his way to the drawing room, Harry steeled himself and gave the door a sharp rap with his knuckles before entering. Erin and Juliet both looked up as he did. The former looked stressed. The latter was in her element and smiling.

"Good evening, Harry," she greeted him as easily as if nothing had ever happened between them – as if they were thirty years old again, lovers and friends, who had not stabbed each other in the back. "Thanks for the food, by the way." Juliet nodded to the Chinese takeaway which had been delivered in Harry's absence.

Harry felt a surge of dislike ripple through him. His eyes slid over Juliet Shaw and down, to the array of disposable containers spread across the drawing room coffee table. He had changed his mind on bringing her Chinese, as she had requested the previous night, at the last minute. It had been a malicious move, as he knew that Juliet had expected him not to, and he hated playing into her expectations. Thinking about it now, however, he realised she might have been playing him that way all along. Or maybe, he told himself – almost rolling his eyes at the internal rigmarole Juliet could cause, with a few words – his arch-nemesis was just hungry and he was over-analysing everything again.

Shaking himself free of his paranoia, Harry stepped forwards into the room, turning to Erin.

"How are things going?" he asked, completely ignoring Juliet and her comments.

His one-time boss looked nonplussed, turning to pick at her spring rolls, while his Section Chief flicked through the debriefing report.

"Smoothly," she replied, with a little sigh. "We have all of the information the Home Secretary will need, to make his decision and Miss Shaw and Mrs North have been fully cooperative."

God, Zoe Reynolds was now Zoe North. Harry had not even thought about that. He made a mental note to change the name in the report.

"Excellent," he nodded, hands slipping into his pockets before he realised he was doing it. Once he had done, he could have kicked himself. It was a nervous habit, a nervous habit that Juliet knew about. The spook in him knew he shouldn't be showing fear – like any animal, Juliet could smell fear – but he resisted from drawing back from the movement. He had already started, after all, and drawing back would make it more obvious. Reminding himself to be more careful with his movements, for the rest of their conversation, he turned to address Juliet. "I suppose I do not need to tell you," he began, "that if we find you are holding back any information, from this investigation, it will look very poor on your appeal for a lenient sentence."

Juliet gave him a scathing look as she bit the end off a spring roll. Erin busied herself re-sorting her already-sorted papers, in her file, clearly embarrassed by Juliet's lack of respect for Harry's seniority. Harry gave his boss, turned lover, turned arch nemesis a moment, then tried again to initiate a response from her.

"Have you supplied Miss Watts with all the salient details of your movements, up until last night, from the time you left us?" he asked.

Juliet gave a very weary sigh.

"All the relevant ones, yes."

"And what bits did you deem not relevant to share with us?"

"Well," Juliet raised an eyebrow, "that would be the bits that were not relevant, Harry. I thought you, of all people, would understand what 'salient details' meant?"

A few moments passed, Harry feeling his heartbeat a little stronger than usual. Here started the games, then, he thought a little dryly. Juliet was good at games. She had years of experience in interrogation and was lethal at it – better than his officers and better than him. Harry knew that, well enough. He had watched her work, had worked under her, had witnessed her break a radical extremist and a true believer in under ten hours. Harry had been on the receiving end of her mind games, also, of course. More than once. He had seen the way her eyes grew sharp, as she steeled herself for the parry and thrust of it all. She enjoyed the game, he realised, for the same reasons he hated it.

Still, enjoy or not, sometimes he had no option but to play. And Harry always played to win.

"Erin?" he asked, turning with a pleasant smile to his Section Chief.

Erin looked quickly up.

"Yes, sir?"

"Can I have the room, for a moment, please?"

That caused a flicker of worry to pass across both women's faces. After all, Erin knew that he had a lot of reason to be angry with Juliet and, perhaps, did not completely trust him to be alone with her. Harry did nothing to reassure her that Juliet would be fine, however. Her reaction was enough to spook Juliet slightly and Harry wanted her spooked. Harry wanted her off her guard with her claws unsheathed. Juliet was at her most dangerous when she was playing harmless so he wanted to elicit a response – to see where they stood, if nothing else.

Erin gave him a curt nod then stood, packing her file and other items back into her briefcase. Juliet just sat, stock-still. For a few long moments, her eyes darted between Harry and Erin before lowering to her food again. She continued to eat, silently, as if she were completely ambivalent towards the other woman leaving. Harry watched her carefully until the door closed behind his Section Chief and they were alone. Then he slowly made his way over to sit on the sofa at ninety degrees from the one Juliet sat on.

Watching her, he rearranged the cushion to one side and slowly unbuttoned his jacket, taking a seat. Once seated, he crossed one leg over the other, leaning back. Each movement was purposefully slow and precise. Though her eyes remained firmly on her food, as she picked at it on top of the coffee table, Harry knew she would be watching him in her peripheral vision. Clearing his throat, softly, he folded his hands in his lap, taking his time, making her wait. He could sense her paranoia and irritation building. Until...

"Oh for God's sake, Harry," Juliet muttered, darkly. "You were always a tease but this is getting ridiculous. What do you want to say?"

Harry took another moment to draw out his silence, then tilted his head to meet her eye.

"What are you doing with my officer, Juliet? Zoe isn't like you. What are you trying to get from her?"

Juliet's eyebrows shot up towards her hairline, causing a series of fine lines to form across her brow and around her eyes. Age suited her, oddly enough, thought Harry. The expressions which might have been too sharp on her younger self were softened, by time.

"_Your_ officer?" she replied, indignantly. "Harry, Zoe ceased to be your officer the day you asked her to sacrifice her name and all she was. You abandoned your officer." Raising her hand, she pointed out, towards the hall and the way Harry had come. "That woman is Zoe North and you have no claim on her."

"And you do?" he asked, softly.

Juliet's eyes swam with a potent mixture of emotion. Anger was foremost, but Harry also spotted fear and distrust amongst them. She did have an emotional connection here, but was it just fear for her own livelihood if something came between her and Zoe. What was so important about their partnership? Why had she travelled halfway across the world to seek Zoe out, when there must have been a dozen decommissioned officers she might have contacted, to do her dirty work?

"I have no claim on her," Juliet eventually spoke, softly. "We are partners. We have worked together for two years. I trust her."

Harry gave a soft, slightly unintentional snort of laughter. "You trust no one."

"I trust her," Juliet repeated, her voice low and somewhat dangerous. Setting her fork down on her plate, with a loud clink in the cavernous drawing room, she leant forwards. "I am not who you used to know, Harry. You might sit on your throne in Thames House, where nothing changes, but I have spent the last four years in the real world. I have had to change. I had no choice."

"And what was the next step you took, after turning traitor?" Harry asked, his voice as syrup smooth as he could manage.

Juliet's lip curled.

"Don't you dare talk about what you don't understand! I did what I did for the good of the country. I was trying to save lives."

"At the cost of democracy?"

"Democracy is a facade, Harry," she snapped back, rolling her eyes. "You know that just as well as I do."

Harry frowned.

The effectiveness of democracy was one of their oldest arguments. They had followed its path several times, in their youth, although it had been an altogether more pleasant affair back then – a gentle, verbal sparring as they sprawled across sex-stained sheets.

Pillow talk had been one of the most pleasant aspects of their relationship. The sex had always been good, in Harry's opinion, but the pillow talk had been great. It had been a bit of a novelty for him, really. Juliet had been the only woman he had slept with who he could openly talk about his work with. For the first time, physical comfort and emotional venting were not required to be exclusive and Harry had enjoyed that aspect of their relationship immensely. Juliet had outranked him. So, for every piece of intelligence he knew, she had known more. He had never needed to worry about compromising national security, when he wanted to vent about his day. He had never had to hold back, when he wanted to work through some problem out loud.

More than that, too, Juliet had been one of the few women – after his wife – who had been his intellectual equal. Lying across each other, they had argued politics and talked shop. Secrets and espionage, surveillance and automatic weaponry; they had revelled in their secret world while his fingers had played across her body. He had learned her, inch by inch. He had learned her well enough to know that she _did not_ believe democracy was a facade. Never once in their gentle arguments had she said that. She had believed in their cause, as did he. They had fought to protect democracy.

"What you did was wrong," he stated, bluntly. "Don't try and disguise it inside anti-democratic dogma. It doesn't suit you."

"Should I have started with something a little more believable?" Juliet asked. "Okay... it was all about the money."

"Don't be crass," Harry wrinkled his nose.

"I'm back to get inside your investigation then sell you out, to the highest bidder," she admitted and, for a split second, Harry almost considered it. "Then, I am going to topple the government and insert myself as the new Prime Minister." She threw him a disgusted look. "Get a grip, Harry, I'm here because I have to be. I have nothing left out there. There's no money to be had for two exiled spies, any more. Our outfit is not big enough, not well-enough funded, not willing to dirty our hands with what others are, for the same price. There are no more jobs that I can pull without backup and Zoe wants to come home." A few seconds passed, in silence, then she added, "I'm here because I have no choice."

Harry watched her, shrewdly.

"I don't think I have ever seen you do something because you had to, before, Juliet," he told her. "In fact, I think what you are saying is most likely a ruse - your using some lines that I would not expect in order to catch me off guard, to convince me that you've changed. But I know better than to expect, with you, now," he informed her. "I never expected treason, after all, and yet here we are..."

Juliet's jaw tightened, her eyes suddenly losing all hint of playfulness. The game was a game no longer. "I'm not here to explain myself to you, Harry," she snapped, angrily. "I'm here to make a deal. I want a reduced sentence for me and a free pass for Zoe and her family. You make that deal and I will deliver you whomever it is that wants Torrance Wood dead. Then," she added, cold and sharp, "none of us will never darken your doorstep again. You never have to speak or hear from us. It'll be as if this was just some terrible nightmare, where you had to confront those who you had failed, at one time or another."

Harry swallowed.

"I have made no such stipulation, for Zoe," he said, quietly. "She is very welcome to remain in contact, if this all pans out."

"But you don't like loose ends, Harry," Juliet threw him a nasty smile, "remember?"

He did. It was something he had said, a long time ago, on a rainy night not so dissimilar to this one. Lying on her belly, her naked skin dappled in lamplight from the street outside, Juliet had been telling him he was being transferred to Five. An operation in Northern Ireland, she had explained, it would be a good career move and he should take the job. Harry, half dressed and watching her from a few feet away had just stood there, not quite taking it in. Eventually, he had asked her if she was staying in Paris and Juliet had just nodded, mid-way through lighting a cigarette. Nonchalantly, she told him it was best that way.

He had never really seen it coming. To this day, he could not remember any indication why she wanted to end it. Over the years, he decided that they simply had not been built to last. The foundations of their relationship had been built upon a sordid affair. They had both been volatile and young for their age. They had both been wholeheartedly given over to the job. And he had never really loved her, Harry knew that, in retrospect. Still, it had hurt, at the time to be cast aside. So, mumbling through his confusion and his injured pride, Harry had agreed with his then-boss's assessment. He had told her that it was best that way – that he hated leaving loose ends.

It was the only time that he could remember where he had seen Juliet completely caught off-guard. She had just laid there and watched him, for a long moment afterwards, eyes endlessly deep and completely open. She had looked momentarily devastated and he had felt some minor triumph in causing it. It was a sick feeling of triumph, however, and it was obliterated as Juliet's cigarette caught light and she had inhaled deeply.

By the time the breath left her lungs again, as smoke, the devastation was gone from her face and her gaze was ice cold. She regarded Harry with no less than silent hostility as she took another drag on the cigarette. Now completely out of his depth, Harry had stood for a moment longer, running one hand over his head, wondering if he should say something and deciding against it. There was finality in the air. The conversation was over. When Juliet had not spoken, for another ten seconds, he went about getting himself dressed and out as quickly as possible.

Loose ends.

Something in the way Juliet had said it told Harry that she did not expect him to remember, so he gave her a half frown, in reply. There were times when playing into someone's expectations was more useful than surprising them and this was one of those times. The last thing they needed, right now, was a reminder of their complicated history. He needed to finalise the details on her deal. He needed to get back to work before he fell over from lack of sleep – so that he could finish here and go home. With Ruth. Ruth, who was light where he was twisted and dark. Beautiful, good Ruth, who he loved.

Suddenly, the need to get away from Juliet and all the bad feeling surrounding her was overpowering. He did not want to be here. He did not want to feel bad, any longer. He was tired and sick of all of this. He just wanted to go home and sleep. He wanted Ruth. Leaning forwards, he pulled himself upright, out of the warm embrace of the couch. Pulling his jacket around him, he buttoned it and watched as Juliet pulled herself up, too, to mirror his position.

"You are sure you have given Erin everything she asked for?" he asked her, shortly.

Juliet nodded, eyes dark.

"Then I'll talk to the Home Secretary on your behalf."

"Thank you."

They faced off for five seconds or so, Harry dreading the moment when he found out what she had done this time. He knew there was more to it than this. She could not simply be involved to emancipate Zoe Reynolds' name and send herself to prison. Juliet Shaw was not a woman who would survive in prison – even if only for a year or two. She was not the sort to do well, in a cage. Too much of a wild creature, for that.

Tensing his jaw, he decided not to extend his hand to shake hers. "I'll be in touch," he nodded, instead, in a tone as professional as he could manage.

Her lips twitched, as if she wanted to say something, then she held back. Her jaw tightened.

Harry swallowed and turned away.

Footfalls muffled by soft carpet, he made it almost to the doorway before she changed her mind and called his attention back to her, with a half-utterance of his name.

"Harry?"

"What?" he asked, pausing near the door, his hand on the handle.

A moment passed and, just as he was about to continue leaving, Juliet spoke.

"Zoe wants her name back," she said, quietly.

It surprised him so much that he turned back towards her.

"Pardon?"

Juliet's eyes flickered left, then right, and she repeated herself, purposefully clearly. "Zoe wants her name back. She understands she cannot be Reynolds but she wants her fore and middle names. I know its stupid," Juliet granted, softly, "but I think it means a lot to her. She wouldn't ask you herself, of course. She wouldn't want you to think her an idiot."

A moment passed, Harry not sure exactly what to say.

"And you?" he eventually settled for.

"Well, I didn't think I had much to lose," Juliet explained, her voice turning colder again as soon as they were off the topic of Zoe Reynolds. "You've already made it abundantly clear what you think of me."

And you of me, Harry thought, frowning.

Confusion swirled. What was her angle? He just could not see it, at the moment, and it was beginning to drive him mad. How did any of this benefit Juliet Shaw? He would like to think that it did not matter what her angle was, because he had a team to keep an eye on her and a plan to keep her contained but, he reminded himself, she had outsmarted him and his team in the past. He probably wouldn't see this ploy coming, either, until it was too late. The thought made him feel extremely unsettled. Sick apprehension tugged at his stomach and he decided he needed to get out of here – get some sleep, clear his head, hope it all made a lot more sense in the morning. Giving Juliet a nod which could be either 'yes' or 'no', he turned and pushed his way out of the room, leaving only silence in his absence.

.

Outside, in the large hallway of the big house, his footsteps sounded twice as loud. Formal shoes clapped smartly against marble tile and the sound left Harry feeling absurdly panicked. In the adrenaline aftermath of his encounter with Juliet, everything seemed too loud, too bright, too much. It was sensory overload and he knew it was out of shock, more than anything else, but it was hard to quell. Taking slow breaths, he tried to slow the spread, instead, to reign it in. That bloody woman, he cursed to himself. Juliet had always unsettled him. At one point, it had been the basis of their attraction but now it just made him feel nauseous. He could not trust her and he did not want her anywhere near his life right now. Every time she came near, destruction followed and he had only just grasped something worth keeping.

Ruth. Suddenly, all that mattered was that he find her.

Speeding up, he headed back through towards the kitchen, his footfalls sounding even louder against the floor than before. He was walking so quickly that he almost ran flat into Erin, Ruth and Zoe as they emerged through the archway, heading the other way. As the three spooks (and one ex-spook) avoided collision, Ruth gave a little jump, Zoe a muttered Harry's name like a reprimand and Erin apologised profusely. Harry did not offer a reply to any of them, immediately. Instead, he quickly sought out Ruth's gaze.

As soon as their eyes connected, he felt a little bit better, his chest became a little less tight, the panic in his stomach a little less sharp. Perhaps it was just reassuring himself she was all right, Harry thought, or maybe there was actually something physically cathartic about her presence. It was possible, he reasoned. She was good, honest and beautiful. And she loved him. Love was healing, wasn't it?

"Hello," he greeted her, trying hard to keep the relief from his voice, trying not to let any of them see how his encounter with Juliet had rattled him.

A tiny line appeared across Ruth's brow – half a frown.

"How did it go with Juliet?" she asked, nervously.

Harry shook his head. "Oh, fine. You know what she's like." Forcing himself to look away from her and over to Erin, he asked, "have you got everything you need?"

Erin nodded.

"I'll write up my assessment, to add to your report, and send it to the Home Secretary's office as soon as I'm done." She blinked big brown eyes. "Shall I attach a note asking him to call you, when he has reached a consensus with his political advisors?"

"Yes, of course," Harry muttered, running a hand over his tired face. "For all the good it will do. Man has half a dozen bloody advisors and none of them have the first clue about security matters," he complained, half-heartedly.

Ruth gave a strange half-sigh – which Harry took to mean she either agreed with him or was reigning in the urge to reprimand him for his comment.

He gave a long sigh.

"Right," he turned to Zoe, "I'm afraid we have to leave you."

"I've survived this far," she replied, with a little smile, "I think I'll survive a little longer."

"Get some sleep," he advised her. There were dark bags under her eyes and her skin was a little too pale for his liking. "If this deal pans out, we're going to need both you and Juliet at your best, in the field."

Zoe nodded.

"Okay."

"Pass on my best wishes to Will and your daughter," he added.

"I will," Zoe smiled. "She's just been taken up to bed, but you'll have to meet her properly, next time."

Next time.

Harry nodded. "I will."

Stepping backwards, he did not offer his hand in goodbye. He hated saying goodbye any more than was strictly necessary, primarily because it was strictly necessary too often in their line of work. Zoe did not seem to be too bothered by his choice. She busied herself, instead, in turning to Erin and Ruth. The Section Chief, she thanked her for her help in managing security around the house. She told her that she would have the details she had asked for passed on to her security detail by tomorrow morning. Erin thanked her in reply.

After they were done, Zoe turned to Ruth, seizing her in a tight hug. Ruth returned the movement openly – her willingness surprising Harry, just a little, who was more used to witnessing her social reticence – the frown disappearing from her face to be replaced by a warm smile. They held each other for a few seconds wordlessly, then squeezed and retreated again.

"I'll see you soon," Ruth promised her, softly. "I've missed you."

Harry wondered if he should have said something similar, then decided it was probably for the best that he hadn't. It would not have sat right. He was Harry Pearce, after all. Zoe had known him as her boss, her Section Head, where she had known Ruth as her colleague and friend. They were expected to act differently. It was just bad luck that Ruth got the warmth and the embraces and Harry ended up with the calling of the Home Secretary and the interrogation of Zoe's mad partner.

"Take care, Ruth."

"I will. You too." Turning from her old friend's side, Harry's analyst looked expectantly over. "Are we going?" she asked.

A little numb from exhaustion and overcome by events, Harry just nodded and headed towards the door. Ruth fell into step beside him. Erin followed them, a few steps behind, throwing some comment to one of the men left to guard Zoe and her family as she went

As the trio proceeded towards the exit, Harry saw movement, from the direction of the drawing room – presumably Juliet, come to watch them leave. He resisted the urge to turn and look properly, however. His time here was over for the night. He was done, he told himself. He was finished arguing over morality and politics. He was finished with bloody Juliet Shaw and her bloody ulterior motives. He was tired and he just wanted to go home and sleep. And Ruth. He wanted Ruth. He wanted to go home and sleep, with Ruth if at all possible. He wanted to forget about everything else.

The desire to forget and the ability to forget seemed to be two different things, however, and Juliet's gaze burned hot against the back of his neck all the way out the door and down the front steps. It was not until he stepped out into the pouring rain that the sensation began to fade. Giving a shiver, Harry put up an umbrella and was lost in the momentary pleasure as Ruth chose to walk by him rather than by Erin, (who had the other umbrella), to keep dry.

Their arms touched gently as they walked back down the street, towards the MI5 pool car. Harry was unused to such small comforts but it felt good. He felt incredibly touched that she had chosen to offer contact, when he knew she feared their relationship's discovery. And she felt so good, so right to be brushing against him, lightly – giving an occasional nudge which Harry thought might be for reassurance. If it was, it worked. By the time they both clambered, soaked again, into the back seats, Harry was feeling infinitely better about the entire evening. Resisting the urge to reach out and take Ruth's hand, he asked Erin to drop them back at the car park, on her way to return the car.

"Lift home?" he asked Ruth, for appearances sake. "You're on my way and the busses are hell at this time of night."

Ruth read in his eyes exactly what Harry wanted her to.

His heart swelled a little in his chest, when she nodded in reply.

.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N - Just a warning... this does get quite sexy about halfway through. if anyone doesn't want to read about Harry getting naked, you'd best move on to the next chapter. As for the rest of you dirty sods, enjoy. =) _

_Silver._

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_Chapter 13 – Rest day_

.

Ruth woke slowly, for what seemed like the first time in years. Almost every morning, these days, she woke to the angry beeping of her bedside clock. She had to set an alarm. She worked long hours and had so few real days off that she always had an arm's-length list of things to do; washing, shopping, trying in vain to keep a handle on the state her house was getting into. So, her alarm clock rang out at half eight on weekends and half six on work days, and she always woke with a start.

Today, however, was different. Today, she woke naturally and found herself curled up amidst a tangle of duvet, sunlight warming her back as her face nestled in the dark spot between two pillows. She was incredibly comfortable. Incredibly comfortable and in Harry's bed, she remembered, as cognisant thought began to drip slowly back in.

It was Tuesday morning, she realised with a yawn, and she was in Harry's bed. They had come home together, the previous night, from the safehouse in Chelsea. Upon arrival, he had offered her a nightcap and made several half-hearted attempts at conversation but Ruth had seen he was exhausted so had suggested they both just go straight to bed. Harry had gratefully agreed. They had traipsed upstairs and her boss had fallen asleep almost as soon as his head had hit the pillows. Poor Harry, thought Ruth, experimentally stretching out a foot to feel for him, across the bed. He worked himself silly.

As her toes slid across the smooth cotton, however, she could not find his sleeping body.

Frowning, she opened her eyes.

The room was more pleasant, in the light of day, than it had been the previous night. Harry's dark beige walls looked almost gold in the sunlight. The dark wooden furniture all glinted opulently. It was a nice room, she mused, turning over on her back. The sheets that were wrapped around her were the softest cotton and a soft cream colour. The curtains were thick and half-drawn. Everything looked carefully chosen for its purpose. Harry's place, she thought, with a little smile. There didn't seem to be any superfluous furniture, no photo frames and no boxes of knick-knacks. A couple of books sat on his bedside table, but that was really it. Most conspicuously, there was no Harry.

Ruth glanced over at the door, which was ajar and frowned. She could hear his voice, out in the hallway. He sounded like he was on the phone. Straining, she managed to catch the end of the conversation.

"Yes, of course," Harry's voice said. "No, I understand." A pause, then, "if you send the details over to Ruth's in-tray she can look at it for you tomorrow. She's off. No, Mr Reid, I don't think that is a good idea..."

A little smile tugged at Ruth's lips. The phone call was form work, then, but Harry's tone didn't sound irritated. It couldn't be that bad. Ruth doubted it was a call for them to head in to the Grid, anyways. There would have been much more snapping if that had been the case and she doubted Mr Calum Reid would have received such a pleasant reply as he had. Outside, in the hall, Harry continued to barter with his junior officer.

"No, that won't work either... you might be able to pull off asking next week, but I'd advise-," Harry stopped and Ruth could just imagine the face he was pulling. A frown, with a slightly wrinkled nose. Confusion, exasperation. "Right. Well, I'll have a word with Erin," Harry said, finally. "I'll see you tomorrow, Calum. Please don't call me unless someone dies."

Presumably, he hung up after that, because Ruth heard nothing for a couple of seconds. Then, footsteps sounded softly in the hall. Her stomach gave a nervous flip. Awkward morning-after meetings were not something she was good at. Though nothing had happened between them last night – apart from a few half-hearted kisses before they both slipped quickly away into exhausted slumber – she was not exactly sure what to say to him. For a moment, she even considered pretending to be asleep again, but decided that would only open her up further to his scrutiny. Arranging herself demurely under the sheets, then, she tried to flatten her hair and make herself presentable before turning to face the doorway.

Harry entered with a towel half over his head, rubbing at his hair vigorously. With another towel slung around his waist, Ruth could only assume that he had just returned from the shower. How she hadn't heard him rise or turn the water on was beyond her. She was usually such a light sleeper.

"Hello," she greeted him, timidly, before he had a chance to lower the towel and find her watching him.

Watching him was putting it lightly, actually. In truth, she was practically leering. They had scanty experience of looking at each other naked, thus far, and it was still something of a novelty. That said, there were already parts of him that she was growing fond of. The soft underside of his belly, marked darker down the middle by fair hair, was one of them. Ruth had traced it yesterday, during their tentative explorations of one another. She wanted to touch him again.

"Morning," Harry murmured in reply, sliding the towel free of his head and using it to dry his face. "I didn't wake you, did I?" he asked, grimacing slightly. "I was trying to keep it down, but you know what having a conversation with Calum is like."

"You didn't wake me," Ruth assured him, though she was not sure what exactly had woken her. "Is there a problem at work?" she asked, softly.

"No, I called him," Harry sighed. "I just realised that there is a bloody firearms re-qualification test, next week. I thought he should probably go along if he insists on pretending to be James Bond."

Ruth smiled, warmth tickling through her lower abdomen. This was her Harry, she realised, the reality of their situation finally dawning on her. Waking up here, with him, was different form waking up in George's Cypriot villa, the morning after their third date. This was not just some nice guy who made her happy, as wonderful as George and her other partners had been, in their own ways. This was more than that. This was Harry – and all the complexity of a relationship which had been seven years in the making. He was hers, finally. Her Harry.

"He thinks you're keeping him out of the field," she told him, about Calum.

Harry rolled his eyes.

"I _am_ keeping him out of the field."

Ruth raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

Giving one last rub of his head, Harry tossed the towel over a radiator and padded forwards, dropping the phone onto the bedside table as he approached.

"Ah. That," he told Ruth, with a slightly playful edge to his voice, "is for me, in my seniority, to know and for the rest of you mere mortals to only wonder."

Ass, thought Ruth, but just rolled over onto her back and watched him come closer.

He stopped at his side of the bed and looked down at her.

"Did you sleep all right?" he asked, suddenly sounding a little nervous.

Ruth nodded, shyly. "Yes. I don't usually, in other people's houses, but you have a really, really nice bed."

That tugged a smile back onto his lips, bringing with it the easy confidence he usually exuded.

"One of my many indulgences," he admitted.

To Ruth's eyes, it did not look like he had many indulgences at all. The bed, admittedly, was a little extravagant for a single man, especially one who was rarely in it for more than a few hours a night. Apart from that and the bottle of expensive cologne on the dresser, on the far side of the room, Ruth thought his existence seemed almost Spartan. His bedroom had little furniture. She couldn't really speak for the rest of the house, as they had dropped their coats at the front door and headed straight up, upon arrival, but he didn't look like someone who indulged too much – at least in interior decor.

Harry moved over towards his bedside table and picked up a mug that was sitting on the side of it. Raising it to his lips, he took a sip of what Ruth assumed to be coffee, and offered her. Though still a little shy about sharing a mug with him, Ruth accepted. Inching a little further up the bed, she arranged herself so that she could receive the cup and keep the duvet over the lower half of her body which was covered in nothing more than a pair of pants. On top, she was wearing an old University of Oxford t-shirt of Harry's.

"That suits you," he commented, as he moved to stand beside the bed, handing over the mug.

Ruth sipped. It was good coffee, definitely filter rather than instant and a good bit stronger than she was used to. Usually, she did not take sugar, but it tasted rather nice with this blend. Eyes lifting to Harry, she found it in herself to answer his comment.

"I have one," she admitted, referring to the Oxford t-shirt. "Admittedly, from a few years on."

Harry threw her a strange look that was somewhere between a grin and a grimace. "Quite a few years," he reminded her.

Ruth smiled.

Age didn't really matter to her. She couldn't have cared less, in fact, that he had already been a teenager when she was born, or that he was finishing university and making babies when she was in secondary school. The fact that she was one year closer to his daughter's age than she was to his was slightly embarrassing, should the subject ever come up, with all three of them in the room – but only if you considered them against social norms. And they were so far from social norms, in their everyday life, that they scarcely mattered.

She and Harry had saved the world. They had killed and sacrificed. They had lived lives which were so far beyond what most people could understand. Who cared if they were slightly irregular in their age gap? Nobody that mattered. Besides, an age gap of thirteen and a half years was only really relevant at the beginning and end of a life, thought Ruth. At forty-one and fifty-five, they were hardly breaking any records. It would be harder as the years went by, she reminded herself, when he began to age before her, but the discomfort of knowing that was tempered by the joy of finally being with each other. They had plenty of time. They had a good twenty to thirty years before they had to start worrying about old age and infirmity taking them. And they had each other – having each other was worth anything the world could throw at them.

As she sipped at her coffee, Harry reached out and brushed aside a strand of hair, which had fallen across her eyes. Both of them momentarily shivered at the contact – a good kind of shiver.

"What can I get you?" he asked her, softly. "Breakfast, more coffee... anything?"

"No, I'm fine." Ruth glanced over, at the clock, her forehead furrowing a little. "It's just past eight, Harry, why are you up?"

Harry let his hand fall back to his side, looking a little bashful.

"I'm one of those fabled morning people," he answered, lamely.

Another little smile tickled her lips. Of course he was. That just figured. Ruth was an evening person, so he should have expected Harry to be the opposite. After all, they had been inconvenient in almost every other way, over the years.

Considering this latest piece of information, Ruth took a moment to study her new lover's partially naked body. She supposed she could forgive him being a morning person and a spy, she thought, giving a smile into her coffee. He was nice to look at, after all. Soft skin, a scattering of fair hair, chubby enough not to make her feel bad about her own weight, strong enough to reassure her that she was protected. He was all that she wanted, in a partner. Admittedly, he wasn't George Clooney but Ruth had never really been one for straight-forwards physical desire, anyway. She appreciated attractiveness, of course – just as much as the next woman – but she had never found it alluring in the way she found knowing somebody alluring. She had never really looked at attractive men on a bus, or passing in the street, and consider what it would be like to have mindless sex with them. Connection and spark had always been more important than simple biology. And she and Harry had an incredible connection. When they touched, it was electric. Ruth thought it might be simply because they knew each other so well.

She liked that – the knowing bit. She liked knowing who he was and what he believed. She liked knowing the little things that most people did not know about each other, in the early stages of their relationship. It marked her and Harry as different. She liked knowing, for instance, that he preferred tea to coffee except for first thing in the morning and that he did not like butter on toast. She liked knowing that his scars had been given to him because he was brave, that the wrinkles in his skin had been made because he had survived where others hadn't. She liked knowing that the slight hesitance in his smile was because he had wanted this for a very long time. He was not the pretty young spook Ruth had seen, pictured in the old archive files, but he was infinitely attractive, to her.

Even if he was a morning person.

Suddenly, she just wanted to touch, just wanted to tug away the damp towel from around his waist and follow the soft path of his hair down, from his navel. It was a little early, she admitted, but they had gone to bed at quarter to ten the night before and Ruth felt more rested than she had been in months. And Harry was here. Half-naked, slightly damp Harry, whose hair was fluffed up the wrong way by his attentions with the towel. Her mouth quirked into a smile at that last part.

"What?" Harry asked.

"I'm not getting out of bed until at least nine," Ruth told him, not elaborating on the hair thing. Taking a steadying breath, she continued. "You could come back and join me, though, if you'd like."

A moment passed in crippling uncertainty. Fingers gripping her coffee mug tightly, Ruth tried not to blush, or bite her lip, or do any of the other half a dozen movements which would give away how invested she was in his answer. Harry just stood, watching her with similar tension on his face then slowly, deliberately, he nodded.

"I'd like that," he said.

Relieved to her core, Ruth could not help but smile a little.

"Okay."

Looking down, she took one last sip of her coffee before reaching over and placing it on the bedside table. Then, scooting over a little, she gave Harry space to sit beside her. They must have been sleeping very close, last night, Ruth thought. Despite the bed itself and its coverings being enormous in dimension, she had woken right in the centre, with the duvet wrapped around her. Harry must have been lying flush behind her, she realised. The thought heated her already-warm skin, sending a rush of anticipation up her spine.

Towel still wrapped around his waist, Harry climbed into bed beside her, propping a couple of the pillows up against the headboard before lying back against them. Ruth gave him a moment to adjust, pushing herself back into her pillows as she did so. This was nice, in a strange awkward sort of way, she thought, watching him. They had so rarely seen each other in these private in-between moments. In-between chaos and work and sleep. It was the in-between parts that interested Ruth about Harry. What did he do on his mornings off, for example? Did he read, or watch television on the sofa, or go on long pointless walks, as she did – not quite sure what to do with herself once she had cleaned her house and read the last bit of her book and realised that she had no social life outside work and nobody to call her own.

Not now, she reminded herself, reaching out tentatively to touch a thin pink scar that ran across his upper chest.

"That looks like it hurt," she murmured softly.

Harry gave a little half shrug. "It healed a long time ago."

Ruth continued to run her hand along it, then on, down his side. Soft skin, soft flesh underneath. He was scarred and broken, this lover of hers, but he was _hers_.

As she continued to trace her hands along him, Harry reached out and brushed her cheek with his thumb, warm palm coming to rest against her neck. Slowly, glancing to her eyes for reassurance, he leant in and pressed his lips to hers. A soft kiss. His lips were warm as they massaged hers – their noses touching, cheeks brushing lightly. It was not a particularly demanding kiss, but it was a slow one. Harry did not pull back once he was finished, just pressed a second, even lighter kiss against her. Ruth slipped her hand around his side, revelling in how solid and warm and completely hers he was.

Harry. Her Harry.

Smiling slightly, she sighed "I've missed you," against his neck.

It should have been a queer thing to say, what with them having been parted only eighteen hours or so, over the last day, but Harry just nodded. Ruth knew he understood. Her 'missing him' was more of a general statement about their relationship than their movements over the last few days. When she said she had missed him, Ruth had meant that she missed the good that they could be. And she had. She had been missing it for a very long time, in fact, amidst all the pain and tension. The light-hearted smiles, the easy way they talked to one another and the secret glances across rooms. She had missed creating moments like this one, (although so unlike this one, really, as they had never been so intimate). She had missed him being Harry and not just her boss. She had missed him.

"I miss you most of the time," Harry admitted back.

"Well we're together, now,"

"Indeed..." Shifting a little closer, he slid his hand up along her ribs, wrinkling the fabric of her t-shirt as he went. "Good morning," he whispered to her.

It sounded, to Ruth, as if he had wanted to say it for a very long time. So, playing into the fantasy, she murmured it back; a shy little greeting, as she wriggled under him. It felt nice. He felt nice. Of course, really, nice was not all that Ruth wanted. Really, she wanted to tug Harry's body completely over hers and pull the towel away from him, but the confidence wasn't quite there yet. So, instead, she satisfied herself with tentatively running her hands up and down his back.

He was incredibly warm – just out of the shower, Ruth reminded herself – and incredibly smooth. Finding the dip in the middle of his back, she followed his spine all the way up to his shoulder blades, as far as she could reach, before sliding back down again. His build had not completely gone to seed, despite having set at a desk for years. Ruth got the impression that, in his day, he had been well muscled. Despite the layer of softer flesh that ran over it, she could still feel the hardness underneath. He had been a fighter, her lover, though his foes then had been more physical than his foes now. He had always been a fighter.

Ruth tilted her chin back, to meet his eyes a little better. As they prolonged their proximity, his gaze was becoming increasingly dark and something instinctive in Ruth was responding by pressing closer. He wanted her, wanted this, wanted release, and she could give it to him. It was strangely empowering. Sliding her hands down to the hem of the terry cloth towel, wrapped around his waist, Ruth rubbed the skin underneath, softly. It was a tease, but only a little one. And Harry did not complain.

"I'd like to take this moment to say," he murmured, as Ruth's fingers tightened and released against his skin, "that I have turned off my mobile phone and the landline is off the hook."

Uncontactable. Ruth did not know whether to be elated or terrified.

"You shouldn't do that," she worried aloud. "What if someone needs to get in contact?"

"They can bloody well come and get me in person." Harry replied, smoothly, pausing to press a soft kiss against her cheek. "They're always less likely to bother me for the little things, this way," he elaborated. "It's probably something to do with the increased likelihood of strangulation."

Ruth forced her face into a reproachful expression.

"Harry..."

"I'm deadly serious."

And he looked it, too. Ruth could not help but give a little smile at the sparkling intent in his gaze. This was it, then, she thought, with a nervous flip of her stomach. Harry had every intention of staying here, with her, in bed, possibly all day. This was the moment they finally got to diffuse six years of sexual tension – that was, if nobody managed to ruin it for them, again.

But today wasn't like the other night, she reminded herself. There were few open protocols on the Grid. The Torrance Wood case was being handled by Erin, under Harry's strict instructions. Ruth and her boss were both on a bona fide 'rest day'. They had twenty-four hours before they had to return to the team. Yes, thought Ruth, sliding the tips of her fingers underneath his towel, just let the world bloody try to pull them apart. Let the world bloody try and stand in their way; Harry had his phone off and Ruth's was out of battery, downstairs, in her bag. They were un-contactable. They had the day off. They had each other. Let them use it well – 'sex' well, preferably.

"This is our time," Harry told her, eyes nervous and wanting and excited all at once.

Ruth nodded.

"Okay."

Letting themselves drift back together, they kissed for a while, hands exploring through the fabrics that separated them. As their bodies relaxed, Ruth began to let herself arch into his touch a little more, began not to blush as his fingers ghosted over her sides and chest through her borrowed t-shirt. New as it felt, it did not feel wrong. So, she steadied her natural instinct to flee at the first sign of nerves and let herself enjoy the contact. She relaxed as Harry worked his way slowly down her neck, kissing her skin. She let her eyes fall closed as her fingers splayed across his back, feeling his body shift and flex.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable kind of exploration but, all too soon, it ceased to be enough. Relaxing became more and more difficult. All Ruth wanted to do was shift the duvet away between them, get rid of the towel and t-shirt, and slid up against each other properly. She wanted skin and heat. From her lover's increasingly quickening pulse, she suspected he wanted the same. Heat. Skin. Contact.

Harry was the first to buckle to the pressure. Sliding his hands down, beneath the edge of the duvet, he began to shift the fabric of the t-shirt northwards. As he did, Ruth's heart flooded with relief. This was as good as permission, she thought. It was okay to move faster. This was their time. Reaching out, she dug her fingers into the terry cloth of the towel around his waist.

Harry startled, just a little bit, as tugged at it. Pulling back from her neck, his eyes locked to hers – so hazel, in the morning sun, that they looked golden. Ruth did not dare wonder what she looked like. All of her desires were there, in her eyes and she felt suddenly laid bare before him. For a few seconds, all she could hear was her own rapid pulse in her ears and she knew that the only reason she was not already running for the hills was that this was Harry, her Harry, and they had known each other for so long. She trusted him, she told herself, so she would not run. She would stay and fight for what she wanted, for once.

After a long moment, her lover gave an imperceptible nod and shifted to one side, allowing her purchase on the towel. Pausing just long enough to feel her heart skip in her chest, Ruth's hands pulled the tucked-in end free. It took only a moment more to coax the towel away from his shower-warm skin – and less than a moment for her hand to slide in to replace it. Wonderful, thought Ruth vaguely, as her fingers crawled across the fair hair of his outer thigh and then on, to the soft skin of the inner. He felt wonderful. He was already more than halfway to erect when she brushed across him, her fingers seeking the trail of rough hair below his navel; warm, swollen and sensitive enough that his whole body twitched at her contact.

"Ruth..." he whispered, fingers gripping her sides a little tighter.

Ruth wondered if they could have counted each other's heartbeats, through their skin. She probably could. His was thumping hard enough.

Tilting her head back, she held his gaze and decided to abandon her quest, to follow the trail of hair up to his navel, and took him gently in her hand instead. She stroked lightly along the almost-solid length of him, skin slipping slightly under her grip. Harry's eyelids half-closed and then blinked open again. Ruth repeated her movement. Harry repeated his – another double blink, this time accompanied by a tiny swallow. He was completely in her thrall, thought Ruth, as she reached back out, sliding her fingertips down to the base of him. His body was stock still, hovering just inches away from hers. Every tiny touch of her hand brought another change in expression across his face. One moment it was adoration, the next, just a little vulnerability and the next, pure and unrepentant lust. And all for her, thought Ruth, with a strange feeling of power. This was all for her.

She ran her hand along him once more, before letting go and splaying her fingers across his lower abdomen, where the trail of hair from his belly met the darker hair between his legs. The muscles deep under his skin were twitching slightly, at the contact. Wanting. He seemed to be hanging on the edge of something – movement, reaching out to her, something – but unable to cross the barrier. Swallowing, Ruth tried to help him.

"Harry?"

Reassurance. Consent. Permission granted.

Harry's eyes lifted to hers again and Ruth saw a flash of relief – perhaps because she was real and not a figment of his imagination or, perhaps, simply because he had survived the first stage of their lovemaking. Whatever the reason, it softened her heart a little. She rubbed her fingertips against his belly.

"Come closer?" she asked, softly.

He nodded.

The towel was kicked to the floor, as Ruth's duvet was pulled down around her, allowing room for him to lower his body down on top of hers. He was completely naked, now, and she was still wearing a t-shirt and pants. There was no imbalance between them, however, because neither was keeping score. This was not about competition, or work, or anything, in fact, but their mutual need to be close to one another. Ruth needed Harry, Harry needed Ruth, (both would probably admit that they needed a bloody good shag), and that was all they needed to know.

As Ruth breathed out a shaky sigh, Harry rolled his body further over hers, guiding the hand that she had wound between his legs up, to lie beside her head. Giving a low sigh, he placed a soft, wet kiss against the side of her neck before retreating, to reposition. Ruth lay still as he crawled over her. He was not particularly graceful, she smiled, but this was them so it didn't matter. Settling himself in-between her legs, Harry dipped in to kiss her again before pulling the duvet up to their midriffs and turning his attention to their inequality of dress. Lowering his hands to the hem of her t-shirt, he slid it up and tugged it over her head.

"That's better," he murmured, dropping it over the side of the bed and lowering his hands trace the sides of her breasts – presumably checking that they had not changed in the twenty-four hours since he had last seen them. "Much better," he added, hands moving south to slip her knickers off.

Ruth blushed as she lifted her hips to help him, then blushed a little more as Harry dropped the undergarment over the side of the bed and returned to examining her now-naked body. She really shouldn't need to feel bashful, of course. Harry had seen everything she had to offer the other night, while he had reduced her to a quivering wreck from approximately where he was seated now. Knowing her anxiety was silly, however, did nothing to calm it. It just made her blush a little more, in fact.

Harry must have noticed because he smiled and stilled, one thumb hovering just below her left nipple.

"Okay?" he asked, softly, eyes twinkling.

Forcing a little nod out, Ruth murmured, "Oh, yes, I'm fine... just feeling a little shy," she explained, turning to humour, to lessen the butterflies in her stomach, "because we clearly haven't known each other long enough, for any of this."

Harry's smile stretched a little and he gave a soft chuckle.

"Clearly."

Brushing his fingers one final time, up her sides, he settled himself on top, careful to take most of his weight on his outstretched arms. As he closed the gap between them, their bellies pressed together and then their chests and, suddenly, Ruth could hardly breathe. It was not from the pressure, though, more the reality of their situation hitting home. They were really very close. Harry's thigh was hooked under hers, the searing skin of his erection pressed against her pubic bone. They were touching everywhere and each little movement seemed to cause an exponential reaction. If Harry started to breathe faster, Ruth could not help but squirm a little underneath him. If Ruth squirmed, her lover tensed and breathed faster. It was maddeningly cyclic.

Giving a half-groan, he readjusted himself.

"You are so beautiful," he mumbled, leaning down and placing his lips against her forehead.

And she felt beautiful, too.

Never in her life had Ruth been touched so delicately, so lovingly, by another person. She had been told she was beautiful before, of course – by lovers in the throes of passion, by family and close friends as well – but not like Harry was telling her now. He said it differently, somehow. His tone was so full of devotion. He loved her, Ruth told herself, with soaring elation. He loved her and he touched her like she was the most beautiful thing in the world. His hands played over her like she was made of glass, or something infinitely more valuable. He touched her as if she were priceless.

Fingers gripped the soft flesh on the sides of her hips and Ruth sighed as Harry pulled her flush against him, sliding their bodies together. Pleasure shot through her entire body, hot and electric. She whispered his name, revelling that she was able to do so.

"Harry..."

She had always wanted to call his name. In the early days, before either of them had admitted how they felt, she had let herself imagine him while her on-off boyfriend of the time had nudged into her. Later, when she was single, she had still let herself imagine him touching her as she let her own hand bring her to climax. She imagined him after turning him down for a second date. She had imagined him that night, when she had lain awake in the Havensworth hotel. Even when she had been forced to flee the country, to die and leave the team behind, she could not push him from her mind.

During her short romance, with a fellow school-teacher in Morocco, she had pretended it had been Harry's fingers playing over her skin. When she met George and decided to make a life with him, Ruth had decided it was time to move on. She decided to push Harry from her mind and try to take pleasure in her new lover, for his own attributes. For a while, she managed. She learned to love George for what he gave to her, for the security of his love and his home and his son. A few times, she managed not to even think of Harry at all, as her husband pulsed love through her body. Her resolved slipped once, though, one warm evening in late July.

Nico had been put to bed and she and George had been drinking in the last of the evening sun, draped across the sun chairs next to the pool. It had been the height of summer. The garden had smelt of sage and lemon thyme and the sun was still low in the sky, despite it being well past nine o' clock. As they had laid side-by-side, George slipped free her dress from around her shoulders, ignoring her half-hearted protest about the neighbours seeing them. Belly to back, it had been the first time she had not been able to see him, during, and the moment had just been so incredibly tender and intense. As he groaned into the back of her shoulder, hand grasping her side, George could have been anyone and Ruth just let her guard slip, just a little. She let herself drift into the past. She imagined Harry's eyes. And, as she came, she whimpered Harry's name without even noticing.

To his credit, George had said nothing, at the time. It was only after she came down from her (uncharacteristically intense) high that Ruth had even noticed she had done it, herself. As they lay in a post-coital embrace, George had stroked her hair free from around her neck and kissed her softly. 'You lost him, didn't you, this Harry?' he had asked her, so gently. 'I catch you staring off into the distance, sometimes, and you say his name in your sleep.' It had been done in the least confrontational way possible and Ruth knew it hadn't been intended to make her cry but she had. George had just held her and waited, stroking her sides until she fell into silence. When she eventually answered a tentative 'yes', George had asked her if she had loved him. She said 'yes' again and the subject had been quietly dropped.

Ruth had been almost ashamed, at the time, for being so weak. Now, however, she knew she had been foolish to think that she could forget about Harry. They had always been something different than the other relationships she had been in. Ruth was not a person who subscribed to fate or destiny, but she believed that two people could come to belong to one another. And, ever since they had formed their strange bond, she only belonged to him. No one else had come anywhere near. Harry's name was the only one she had wanted to cry.

Harry. Her Harry.

Pressing her thighs against the side of his, Ruth coaxed her lover down to her lips again. Arranging their naked bodies against one another, they rubbed gently for another minute or two, breathing growing gradually more ragged. It was an uncomplicated sort of pleasure, requiring nothing more of them than their physical presence and emotional connection. It was wonderful.

Ruth's body was singing with anticipation. It had been such a long time and she so wanted this. Moving slowly, she ground against him as he coaxed her wetter and warmer, drawing her close to his body then kissing her softly. He felt extraordinarily good against her skin but, soon, touch alone could no longer slake her want. They needed to be closer, Ruth thought - against one another, on top, underneath, inside. She stilled beneath him, allowing Harry to slip his hand between them.

"Ruth?" he asked her name, as he paired them against each other, his voice a little breathless.

Ruth nodded.

"Yes... Yes, Harry."

Despite being prepared, she gave a little whimper as they joined. It had been a good few years since she had been with a man and Harry was on the larger side of what her previous lovers had been. Still, he was careful with her. As he slid deeper, he stilled every so often to give her time to adjust. Ruth shifted, getting comfortable, murmuring that she was okay as he asked her, gently. Once he was sheathed completely in her, they hovered a few inches apart, breathing softly, a little overwhelmed by sensation.

This was them. Together. Finally.

Mouthing a soft word, which Ruth thought might be her name, Harry closed his eyes – gathering himself, she realised, with a surge of warmth.

"Okay?" she asked, softly, running one thumb over the crest of his cheek.

Harry half opened his eyes. "Mm."

Wrapping her legs against his sides, Ruth stroked over his face again.

"This is nice," she told him.

Giving one last slow exhale, Harry nodded. "And probably going to be embarrassingly brief."

A little smile tugged at Ruth's lips.

"It doesn't matter."

"Speak for yourself. I have male pride to worry about."

With a chuckle, she pulled Harry's face to hers and kissed him softly, feeling their bodies move together. Her skin was tugging gently, where they were joined. This was easier than Ruth had ever imagined. They worked. They felt so good. Lowering her hands from his face, to his chest and then down, to his sides, she pulled her lover snug against her. Hip to hip, thigh against thigh, sharing air in the small space between them. They were good. Perfect. Wonderful.

They moved slowly, at first, giving tiny little thrusts against each other. Soon, however, slow was not enough and they both gave over to the rising tension in their bodies. Ruth began to arch a little bit harder as her lover began to move faster against her, pushing their bodies more forcefully down into her pillows and causing her hand to have to find its way back to the headboard, to support them. All the while, he kept dipping in to kiss her, seeking reassurance. Knowing their past and why he worried, Ruth gave it generously. A word here, his whispered name there, she urged him deeper, faster, harder. They stayed in the same position for a few long minutes, as their bellies grew slick with sweat. Then, as if by telepathic mutual consent, they dropped away from one another.

Panting for breath, Ruth rolled over and knelt up, facing her lover across their rumpled sheets. Glancing at the bed behind him seemed to be enough to elucidate what she wanted, because Harry quickly flopped down on his back, holding out a hand for her to steady herself as she climbed over him. It was a little harder to pair themselves in this position, than in the first, but they managed and the result was well worth the brief embarrassment.

Once coupled, they began to move again. All the way out, all the way in; her movements accompanied by gentle nudges on Harry's part and, all the while, his fingers firmly gripping her hips. For Ruth, it felt like being tipped steadily closer to the edge of sanity. Her limbs were slipping against the sheets as they fought for friction, her muscles beginning to twitch and strain under her skin. Thoughts began to blur into one another and into reality. Beneath her, her lover altered his rhythm, pulling her body back down over his. Belly to belly, arms entwined. The increased contact caused a groan to rise through her throat.

As they moved, the sunlight crept in through the cracks in the curtains, falling across their joined bodies. It caught the faint sheen of sweat, making them almost shimmer. They were warm, golden and perfect, thought Ruth, breath catching in her throat as her lover changed his angle up into her. They were beautiful and they felt so good that she was beginning to lose her grasp on reality. She did not want to think any more. Her body was tightening, pre-climactic tension growing across her lower back and in the base of her abdomen – a tense, throbbing want. She just wanted to break, to let go, to feel him.

Was he near? She wondered dimly. It didn't really matter, she couldn't really wait. The muscles in her leg were trembling. As Harry's hands pulled her down, she felt herself rise up on the edge of her climax. She was teetering on its brink, body shaking, heart thumping in her chest. That almost painful expectation was ringing in her ears. Harry bounced her softly. Everything was warmth and light and skin on skin - all sensation. Deep in her belly was tingling. Then, with one last roll of her hips, Ruth felt herself begin to fall.

Bliss...

She whined as she felt herself contracting around him. Electric tension, followed by the snap of release. She was breaking, shattering into a thousand tiny pieces. It was pure relief, followed by sharp pleasure, compounding into softer pleasure and spreading out like waves, through her whole body. Bliss. Relief. Almost unbearable pleasure. It took a good ten seconds before she was able to breathe again. And, once she was, all she could manage was a tiny whimper of Harry's name.

As she uttered it, his breaths grew shorter and harsher, but he did not change his steady pace until the aftermath of her climax began to fade. Then, he rolled them gently over and, holding onto her sides tightly, let himself thrust a little faster into her. Ruth's hands found his neck and she held over the back of it as he strained. She whispered his name again as his muscles tensed against her, tightened her legs as his breathing began to catch. She arched her back as he shuddered against her and held him tightly as she felt the heat of his release inside her.

Harry gave a soft, half-strangled groan against the side of her neck. Three long strokes, followed by two short ones, and then the tension slipped away from his body, his muscles relaxing completely. He flopped against her. Ten seconds passed, then twenty, then a minute. They lay, bellies pressed together, letting their soaring heart rates plateau and eventually slow. Wrapped around each other, they listened to their ragged breathing sound, in the silence of the room. They worked, thought Ruth, with distant euphoria. She and Harry worked and they were good. As reality began to fade back in, he whispered her name into the side of her neck and kissed her, and Ruth could not help but smile. Her name, from Harry's lips. He need never say anything else, she thought, that alone could make her feel complete.

Body relaxing into his, she let instinct take over and closed her eyes.

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	14. Chapter 14

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_Chapter 14 – Old and broken things_

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Harry was fairly sure that there was some etiquette to post-coital clinches that involved words, but he was not entirely sure if he was capable. His body felt gloriously empty, the tension he had been distantly feeling, ever since waking up beside her, was finally spent. This had been a long time in the making, he thought, but well worth it. Mind-numbing, heart-stopping sex, which left him feeling beautifully exhausted. The muscles in his shoulders and back felt like water. He only just managed to shift his body off of Ruth's and collapse beside her, before they relaxed completely.

They lay very still, afterwards, panting softly. One of Ruth's hands fell to Harry's chest, its knuckles pressing softly into his skin, but neither of the lovers attempted to speak. Harry's heart was still thundering at an unbelievable pace, within his chest. His head was still buzzing with slightly euphoric thoughts. This was wonderful, he repeated to himself. This was glorious. His eyes skimmed over the lines of his lover's body, taking her in; all sharp collar bones and pricked breasts, the soft curve of her waist leading down to the shadow of her hips, dark hair below. She was so beautiful. One of her legs was still pulled up from where she had cradled him against her. How often had he imagined her legs wrapped around him, Harry wondered, a hundred times, a thousand? More, probably, but never in enough detail.

Lifting a hand, he slipped a finger into her palm and smiled as she wrapped her fingers around him. Her eyes were still focussed somewhere on the ceiling, an expression of distant pleasure lingering in them. He did not do too badly, then, he thought with a little pride. Despite having plenty of practice, over the years, he had been a little daunted by the prospect of them finally coming together. He was glad that he had managed to please her. Glancing over at the clock, however, he couldn't help but wince a little. Nine minutes. He had known it was not going to be a marathon session, by any standards, but still... nine minutes...

Turning back to Ruth, he found that she was watching him.

"That was perfect, Harry," she said, a little breathlessly.

That anyone could use the word 'perfect' to describe him was almost laughable, but something about the way she said it set Harry's heart to warm, instead of his lips to twitching. Ruth's huge blue eyes were focussed adoringly on him and she looked so incredibly content. Happy. He was finally making Ruth happy, rather than sad. God, it really had taken them years to get to this place. For the life of him, now, Harry could not understand why it had had to be so. Why had they missed out on years of this? Body was swimming with adrenaline and emotion, he decided silence was better than some half-hearted reply to her statement. Stroking the back of her hand with his thumb, he gave Ruth a little nod.

They lay together quietly for some time, exploring each other's hands, fingertips running over palms and thumbs, tracing lines across their skin. While they played, the sheen of sweat slowly evaporated off their bodies, leaving them open to the chill of the room. Ruth was the first to admit defeat and let go of their joined hands to squirm under the shelter of the duvet. Harry followed her fairly quickly, surreptitiously wiping himself clean on the farthest edge of the covers. They could get washed tomorrow. The immediate was his concern, right now. And Ruth was his immediate.

Giving a little shiver, she shifted around, getting comfortable in his bed.

"Okay?" he asked her, wondering if she was getting annoyed, yet, by his constant need to check.

She did not look annoyed, as she nodded in reply, but Harry made a mental note to stop asking her anyway. Once or twice meant he cared, four or five meant he was nervous, and seven or eight meant he was irrevocably damaged, insecure and terrified that she would leave him – and he couldn't let her know that was the truth. After tasting this bliss, he didn't dare think what it would feel like to be ripped apart from each other, again. Perhaps they had been wise, then, in taking so long to come together, he thought, as Ruth reached out to trace her fingers across his chest. Imagine if they had grown this close before the Cotterdam incident, or before Lucas had stolen her from him? There were half a dozen times where Harry might have broken, over the years, had they been as close as this.

That thought lingered, for a moment, causing brief anxiety at the back of his mind. Then, Harry stored it away to analyse later. This moment was a happy one. Right now, they were not meant to be thinking about the future and the trials they would face but about the present and how wonderful they were. It was one of the few times, in life, where it was entirely appropriate to bask in your own success. And Harry liked to bask, now and again.

"Sorry that did not last longer," he excused, thinking that he would have been even sorrier if it hadn't felt so bloody good.

Ruth frowned.

"I told you, it was perfect," she chastised, warmly. Her fingers crawled up, tracing the notch at the base of his neck, feeling his throat move as he swallowed. Harry felt slightly like he was being mapped and committed to memory. It seemed the sort of thing that Ruth might do. "Honestly, Harry," his lover said, her voice a little softer, "this was..." she bit at the inside of her lip, then frowned slightly and looked up at him. "I know this sounds completely ridiculous, but I'm just so glad we work well, after all of this."

A short burst of laughter broke free from Harry's lips before he could stop himself.

Ruth blushed and looked slightly nervous again.

"I know what you mean," Harry hastened, to ease her discomfort. "We had a lot of history and expectation riding on this. For what it is worth, though, I never doubted that we would work well together." Reaching out, he stroked an errant strand of hair back into place and then traced the rise of her cheek with one thumb. She was beautiful. Beautiful and delicate and his. "...I don't know why we weren't doing this years ago," he admitted to her, in an almost-whisper.

"Me, mostly," Ruth told him, sheepishly.

"No, that's not fair," Harry reprimanded softly. "I do have terrible timing."

A smile drew Ruth's lips back a little.

"I don't know... I rather enjoy your timing."

"Hah,"

Ruth giggled and turn away as he leant towards her. There was nowhere really to escape to, however, when they were both wrapped in the same duvet, legs laid over one another's, and he caught her quickly. Sliding a hand around her neck, he turned her face gently towards his. The skin across her cheeks was still heated in a slight blush and her eyes were shy, but she looked happy to be where she was. Here. With him. Stretching a little towards his lover, Harry brushed a kiss across her lips.

"I rather enjoyed all of this."

"We'll have to do it again, sometime," Ruth suggested, eyes darting between his lips and eyes.

"Indeed," Harry sighed. "Repeatedly."

Another little laugh escaped her lips and Ruth lowered her forehead, to lie against his chin. Closing her eyes, she nestled her face into the hollow of his neck, her hands slid up his sides as she wriggled closer. Carefully, they arranged themselves around one another, sliding legs into a more comfortable position. Harry took a moment to feel smug, for having indulged in feather down pillows and an enormous luxury bed. Ruth certainly seemed to appreciate it. She was smiling as she leaned against his side. Stroking his fingers through her hair, Harry began to drift off.

Post coital dozes were every bit as nice as pillow talk, he mused, as Ruth's hands traced lazy circles against his skin. Indeed, the moment was far too perfect to ruin with words. There would be plenty of time, in the future, to chat. Right now, Harry just wanted to soak up their new, intimate existence. And sleep, with her in his arms.

They lay together for half an hour, or so, in perfect contentment. Outside, the street slowly came to life, voices and cars sounding as they made their way down the road and into work, the chatter of children as they made their way to school. Inside, everything was silent. The house was large and empty and warmer, as the heating turned on. Harry drifted in and out of it all, engaging in several long and complicated daydreams, which consisted of having to find something in amongst the files on his desk, forgetting what he was looking for, then waking up and realising that he was not at work and that it didn't matter. Beside him, Ruth alternated between tracing his body and napping happily in the sunlight. This had to be karma, thought Harry, for all the times they had been hurt.

Eventually, however, life had to move on. Ruth stretched against him, rolling over onto her back. Noticing she looked a little more interested in getting up, Harry forced himself back into wakefulness. Giving an enormous yawn, he ran his hand down, from where it had been lying on her belly, to gently squeeze her thigh.

"If you want a shower or anything, there's hot water," he told her, his words muffled through a second yawn. "At least, there was earlier, but the boiler has a habit of packing in when you least expect it."

Ruth shot him a smile.

"Old house."

"Ancient," Harry agreed, stretching his legs, feeling his toes press into the side of her calves. "Breaking down, falling apart, completely ridiculous."

"Old houses have strong foundations," Ruth pointed out, ever the optimist.

"Small mercies," Harry sighed.

"Well, I like it," Ruth glanced around the room and back to Harry. "Not that I've seen all of it, yet. Do I get a tour?" she asked. Playfully, Harry realised, looking over at her in wonder.

This was Ruth being playful. It was a slightly different side to her and almost strange but, at the same time, fascinating. Like an obsessive discovering a new angle on his favourite obsession, Harry leant closer, pressing a kiss reverently to her cheek and then her forehead, and then her lips.

"If you'd like," he told her, not quite concentrating on the conversation anymore. As his fingers traced her thigh, over the top and down the inside, they came into contact with the slick wetness he had left behind there and a strange mix of feelings rushed through him. Amusement that she had not wiped it away yet, a little apology that he had not asked her if she wanted him to pull out, a second wave of lust, and then, lastly, a surge of smug possessive pride. She was his.

"I should probably shower first," Ruth murmured, feeling him feel her.

She had a hidden smile in her eyes, which Harry had not seen since their attraction had been new and light-hearted and easy, back before all the doubt and complication slid in. Running his hand back over her thigh, then up against her belly, he swallowed back the need to tell her how amazing and wonderful she was and offered to show her how the shower worked, instead. As Ruth nodded, Harry briefly wondered whether she was the sort to shower with her lovers, but decided it was a little too far to push, on one of their first days together. Instead, then, he slipped out of bed and grabbed hold of his discarded towel from earlier, wrapping it around his waist.

"Right. I have dry towels somewhere in here, too..."

Ruth rolled over on her belly, watching him contemplatively as he searched.

"Here we are." Finding some, he walked back over and stood before her, a little bit unsure of how this was all supposed to go.

Ruth seemed a little more sure. She lay watching him for a moment longer, then sat up and let the duvet fall free from around her. She held her hand out of the towels and Harry handed them over but she did not precede to wrap herself in them. Instead, she swung her legs out of bed – feet touching the floor with a soft double 'tap' – and stepped past him, completely naked. Rendered uncharacteristically speechless, Harry just gaped. Dipping to scoop up the old Oxford t-shirt, she made her way out of the room. Harry continued to stare after her, frozen in wonder and a little bit intimidated. By the time he worked up the compulsion to follow her, out into the hall, she had already located and disappeared into the bathroom.

Padding after her, Harry found her waiting against the counter, the old t-shirt pulled over her head. There was something about seeing a woman wearing his clothing which was unbearably alluring, he thought – something to do with possession, perhaps, or the way it highlighted how much smaller she was. Whatever it was, it roused some protective instinct, deep within him. The fabric was long enough to fall midway down her thigh, but old and threadbare enough that he could see the outline of her waist through it as she stood, silhouetted against the frosted glass window pane. As he falteringly approached, Ruth tilted her chin back, asking him to lean in and kiss her.

It was odd, Harry thought, as her soft skin met his, as the warm wet of their tongues brushed. They had spent their lives together, thus far, avoiding moments and now they made them freely. Odd, yet wonderful.

He kissed her deeply, leaning back against the sink, both of them losing themselves in the pleasure of it as minutes passed. Only once they began to run short of breath did they realise that they had been kissing for some time. Parting from him gently, Ruth lowered her forehead to rest against his cheek, her eyes cast low. Up close, Harry could only see the very edge of blue iris, fringed by her dark lashes.

"Sorry," he murmured, causing Ruth's lips to twitch into a smile, "I was going to show you the shower, wasn't I?"

"It's okay," she whispered him back. Her fingers found his sides, smoothing down him gently. "We have all day."

All day sounded good.

.

He eventually managed to show her how the shower worked, hanging around until Ruth asked him if he was angling for an invite. Suppressing a blush, he quickly mumbled no and that he would go dig up some breakfast while she was in. As he left, he caught Ruth smirking slightly again, possibly at how easy he was to rattle.

Cursing his inability to act like a normal human being, Harry made his way back through to his bedroom and dressed, taking a little longer than usual due to a sudden and irrational dislike of all of his inadequate casual clothing. Finally, he found a vaguely presentable blue shirt under the rest and dragged it on. Pulling on some trousers to match, he smoothed his hair and made his way downstairs and went about making more coffee. Beans in, filter in, water in, he toyed with the settings for a bit, suddenly considering them inadequate now that they had to make coffee for Ruth. Ruth, who was in his house, in his shower, naked. Managing, (just), to move on from that thought, he went set the machine to start and turned his attentions to searching through his cupboard for appropriate breakfasting materials.

Being a single man, living on his own, who often had to rush out the door at mysterious hours of the night, Harry did not have a large supply of breakfasting materials. He had bread and jam, and a very pallid stick of butter that he daren't check the date on, but nothing that really seemed adequate for company. He might be an acceptable lover, he thought as he ducked down and began to look through the lower cupboards, but he was really quite naff at this morning-after business. He didn't know what to say, or do, or how to act. It was not surprising, really, that he had reached fifty five with only a string of short term relationships and one failed marriage to show for himself.

Standing in the kitchen, Harry toyed, for a while, with the idea of leaving to go and get food but decided against it. He didn't really know what Ruth would want, anyway. He would just ask her what she was in the mood for when she came down, he decided, and they could go out to get breakfast. And in the future, he reminded himself, he would be better prepared.

"Penny for them?"

Her voice sounded suddenly from the doorway, catching Harry rather by surprise. He had heard the shower turn off, upstairs, but he had not heard her coming down the staircase. Her footsteps must have been light enough not to make it creak, he thought, dragging his eyes over her. She was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, a grey dress and dark leggings underneath. Her hair was towel dried and already forming half curls, very dark against her skin. As she shifted, slightly, on the spot, Harry noticed that her feet were bare on his tiled kitchen floor.

"I see your clothes dried out all right," Harry pointed out, for lack of any other conversation starter.

Ruth smiled.

They had arrived back, last night, soaked to the bone and shivering. Exhausted, Harry's only real intention had been to get dry and curled up in bed as soon as possible. Ruth had seemed only too willing to participate. There had been a semi-awkward moment, as they had stripped themselves of their sodden vestments, when Harry had felt desire for her stir, within him, but it had been quickly masked by weariness. Throwing their clothes over the radiators upstairs, they had appropriated some of Harry's old t-shirts (and pyjama bottoms, in Harry's case) and fallen into bed. They might have talked for a little while, after that, but Harry could not be sure. He had not slept more than three hours in as many days and his body had felt like it was shutting down. He faintly remembered kissing her softly before curling up against her side and sinking into blissful slumber.

He needed to sleep more often, Harry decided, as Ruth smiled and muttered something about her clothes being as good as washed, from all the rain. If he slept more often, he would be able to stay awake and entertain his younger lover.

"I don't have any food here that would be considered edible," he admitted, a little sheepishly.

Ruth did not seem to mind. Giving a little shrug, she walked over to him, bare feet almost soundless on the tiled floor. Harry smiled. Somehow, her having bare feet in his house made the situation so much more intimate. It implied that she was at home here, that she was comfortable, and that was what he had always wanted. She had pretty feet, too, Harry thought, admiring the way they delicately tapered down to her toes. He would investigate them further, sometime, he decided – massage her skin all the way up from her feet to her head. Maybe she would like that.

"It's strange, to see you in something other than a suit," Ruth commented, from a few inches away. Reaching out, she brushed his shirt down, where it had wrinkled against his side.

Harry quirked an eyebrow. "Mm, surprising, isn't it? Contrary to popular belief, I do not fade away whenever I cross the threshold of Thames House."

She laughed, softly.

"All I meant was that I never really see you, outside work and there you seem to have a penchant for expensive tailoring."

"Penchant?" Harry asked, trying his best to sound slightly indignant.

Ruth's hand slid around to his lower back as she tilted her head back, pressing a very soft kiss against his cheek.

"Don't get me wrong," she said, with a little smile. "I like it." Her fingers gave a little scratch through the fabric of his shirt, then she retracted her arm and stepped past him, walking over to the kitchen patio doors and looking out. "It's finally stopped pouring, then," she commented, smiling out at the blindingly bright day outside.

Harry stared after her, hopelessly caught up in the way she moved, the gentle nuances of her voice, the fact that she was in his house on their day off and she had just kissed him on the cheek like it was the most natural thing of the world.

Finished scanning the garden, Ruth turned back towards him.

"I never imagined your house like this," she admitted, with curious eyes.

Harry cleared his throat. Glancing to the coffee machine, he saw it would be another five minutes or so before it was done. They had time.

"Do you want that tour, then?"

"Yes, please."

"Then we can have coffee and discuss where you want to go out, to eat, because I have nothing," he reminded her.

Ruth just smiled.

"Okay, Harry."

.

They started in the kitchen itself, Harry unlocking the patio doors and allowing her to pop her head out to get a better view of the garden. It was a large garden, considering where he was, in the city. It was the reason, in fact, that he had purchased the house, many years ago. It curved gently out from the back of the house, heading down to the shed at the far end. Before the lawn, there was a small paved patio which held two chairs, a small table and what had used to be a barbeque before the house's previous tenants had turned it into a bonfire pit. There were still a few scorched pieces of wood scattered around from where Harry had spent a day, a few months back, burning important documents during his garden leave – (assuming, at the time, that he was about to be forcibly removed from his position, following the Albany fiasco).

"It's not much. The shrubbery has intentions on my garden fence," he explained, to Ruth, pointing out where ivy and a nameless other plant had crawled up the side of the wooden slats. "I suppose I should do something about it but I don't feel my social life has descended to the point of gardening, yet."

"It's a lovely garden, even for the area," Ruth stated, softly. "Plenty of room."

Harry felt an unaired question in her voice. He suspected he knew what the question was. This was a large, Victorian family house, on an affluent, peaceful street which housed more couples and children than it did middle aged bachelors. He had a garden and spare rooms. He had a whole garage full of boxes of his children's things.

"This is where my family lived," Harry explained, softly, eyes darting between Ruth's as he said it. "Before the divorce."

A strange expression flitted across her eyes. Harry could only guess at what she was thinking, but his guesses alone made him nervous. Why was he living in the house he had been kicked out of, all those years ago, surrounded by his broken family's belongings? This was the house that he had shared with Jane – surely that meant something – was that bad? Ruth said nothing immediately, just licked her lower lip and continued to watch him, thoughtfully.

Eventually, Harry forced himself to continue, to explain.

"When myself and Jane split," he began, "I rented another house, up in St Johns Wood. I think I thought that, if I could buy a place big enough, I could win over the children." He winced slightly, having not intended to voice that last part aloud. He did have a terrible habit of over-sharing, where Ruth was concerned. Things just sort of tumbled out. "Jane stayed here and I paid out my half of the mortgage," he soldiered on. "When the house was legally ours, I continued to pay my half of the tax and upkeep, as part of my contribution to the children's costs." He shifted, the awkwardness that set in whenever they talked about his children nipping at his spine. "Jane remarried and they stayed here. We always said that we would sell it once the children had moved out, but they kept coming back – after school, loosing jobs, falling out with flatmates, etcetera. Anyway," he sighed, "six months ago, Catherine bought a house with her fiancée and Graham moved out for good. The place was too big for just Jane and Robert so they decided to move out to her family's cottage, in Buckinghamshire, and she sold her half to me. I have been meaning to sell it on," he explained, "but I've not really had the time to get the lawyers and the real estate people in, yet..." he drifted off, with a little shrug.

Ruth shifted, looking mildly surprised.

"So your children grew up here?" she asked, eventually.

Harry nodded. "We moved here when Catherine started to walk around. Our flat was not really suitable, with a toddler. Jane's grandparents died, that year, and left her quite a large sum of money in their will. It was the only reason we could afford the down payment."

"Right."

They both looked around themselves for a while. Then, Harry nodded towards the doorway, from the kitchen back out into the hallway.

"Would you like to see the rest?" he asked, to break the strange tension in the air between them.

Ruth nodded, obviously still a little thrown that this was his family's house. Harry understood why. She had signed on for this, had known fine well about his emotional and physical baggage, but perhaps she had not expected it to make an appearance so early on into their relationship. And it was strange, he told himself, for a man to be living in the shell of his family's house – fifteen years after he had left them. It spoke of deep emotional and commitment issues.

Putting his best foot forwards, Harry pushed on, leading the way out into the hall. He took Ruth past the pantry, utility room and downstairs bathroom in turn.

"Not much to see in there," he added, gesturing at the spotless rooms in question. "I only ever seem to use my bedroom, the upstairs bathroom, and the kitchen. The rest of the house is a bit neglected, I'm afraid." He illustrated his point by running his hand over the mantle in the living room as he entered and grimacing at the thick layer of dust. "Living room," he proclaimed, nodding around him. "Books, tele, countless other things I never have the chance to use."

"It's lovely," Ruth murmured, sounding a little surprised.

Harry wondered what he had done to garner her doubt as to his interior decorating skills.

"I'm afraid I have Jane to thank for most of it," he admitted. "The furniture is all hers. Said it wouldn't fit into the new house anyway." Harry wandered over to one of the armchairs and leaned against the back of it. "It's rather nice, having some of it back. I was the one who bought these chairs in the first place but I lost them when we split." Like so much else, he added, inside his head. "Jane always hated the pattern. Said it looked like it came from the eighteen hundreds."

Ruth looked a little emboldened by the conversation turning to furniture patterns. This, it seemed, was a subject she could handle, unlike Harry's divorce, or children, or the fact that he was still living in his family home.

"Wear your smoking jacket and pipe in it, do you?" she asked, smiling a little.

"And my slippers," Harry nodded. "While I read the paper and contemplate other noble manly pursuits."

A warm chuckle escaped his lover's throat and he felt suddenly inclined to lean over and kiss her again. He waited until she stepped closer, however, before he made his move.

As Ruth sidled up, admiring the books on the shelf – running her fingertips over one of the Parisian vases next to them – Harry turned gently into her. Dipping his head in, he kissed the side of her neck and Ruth exhaled, slowly. She had stopped walking the moment he touched her and the kiss was enough incentive for her to reverse her footsteps entirely, taking a step backwards into him. They faced each other slowly, inches apart, standing just behind his armchair.

"It's a lovely house, Harry," she said, softly.

For the briefest moment, he had the mad urge to ask her to come and live with him in it, to marry him, to stay with him forever, and then it passed. He had gone down that route before – scaring her by moving too quickly, by trying to jump in with both feet, not considering she was more of a dip-your-toe-in-the-water first sort of girl. Instead of blurting it out, then, he just reached up and brushed her bare arm with his thumb.

"Do you want to see the rest?"

She nodded.

Slowly, the disentangled themselves from each other and made their way out into the hall. Harry led her to the door opposite the living room on the same side as the kitchen. "Dining room, or formal living room," he told her, moving inside. The room was almost entirely devoid of anything, white sheets thrown over the furniture. "Don't think I've been in here since the day after I moved in," he admitted, with a wince.

From there, they moved upstairs and Harry led her through the small bedroom at the end of the house, which was still decorated as Catherine's room. Next to it was a small staircase, which Harry told her they would explore in a moment, then a guest bedroom which used to be Graham's.

"He took all of his things with him when he left," Harry explained, momentarily forgetting himself and allowing the sorrow to shine through.

His relationship with his son was one of the aspects of his past he regretted most. He had been a dreadful father to the both of them but Catherine, being more like her mother – and less stubborn than he and Graham – had gradually come around to forgive him, a little. They talked on the phone, now, and occasionally she emailed him photographs of how she was getting on, abroad. She was to be married later that year, Harry new, after a lengthy engagement and several set-backs involving a failed documentary and financial problems. Harry had been invited, of course, and he quite wanted to attend but there was the dual problem of not knowing if he could guarantee time off work and not knowing if he could stand seeing someone else walk her down the aisle. Besides, Graham would be there. And he and Graham had not talked in years.

Ruth's fingers at his back drew him back to reality as she moved past him, down the hall.

"Your room," she murmured, as she ran her fingers over the doorframe of the room they had slept in, last night.

Harry explained was really the guest bedroom, the real master being the converted attic upstairs. "It's full of boxes, at the moment, though."

"I see." Moving on, they passed an airing cupboard and then the bathroom, then turned back along the hall. Reaching the door opposite Harry's, facing out onto the front of the house, Ruth raised an eyebrow enquiringly. "And this?" she asked.

"Box room," Harry explained, as she pushed inside. "Considered turning it into an office, but I haven't got around to it yet. It was Graham's nursery, when we first moved in," he added, as he stepped into the frame after her. It still held a crib, too, piled high with boxes. The rest of the baby things were gathered in here too – things which Jane had taken out of storage when she had moved out of London, then failed to pick up. "I think she's keeping them for Catherine, for when she has children of her own..." Harry explained and then tailed off, catching sight of the expression on Ruth's face.

She looked momentarily wistful, he realised, with a pang of uncertainty. All of a sudden, his thoughts returned to the boy he had inadvertently made fatherless, the boy who had been taken from her. She had been a parent for a very short time and he had stolen that. Now she would never know the strange sad joy.

He swallowed, hard.

"That's nice, for her," Ruth said quietly, touching the thick wood of the crib's headboard, "to have something to pass down."

They stood in silence for a while, Ruth lost in reverie and Harry feeling more and more out of his depth. She was only forty-one, he realised again, his eyes tracing over her. If she had been with anyone else, if he had been ten years younger, there would have been a gentle segue, here, into the question of children in their future. As it was, he was fifty-five, with a terrible track record in parenting, and he had already caused her to lose one family. As Ruth's fingers picked out the engraving along the top bar of the crib, she gave a little sigh, and then turned back to Harry, jerking herself back from her inner thoughts. The smile on her face was warm enough but Harry had known her long enough to tell that it was slightly forced.

"So," she asked, brightly, "what's upstairs?"

Harry looked about himself, murmuring something unintelligible, then turned and led the way out of the room, back along the corridor. Ruth padded a few feet behind as they made their way along to the narrow attic staircase. Harry used the time, where she could not see his face, to orientate it into an expression which did not look either apologetic or abjectly terrified that she might realise what a crap deal she was getting, out of him, and decide to leave.

"This didn't exist, when I lived here," he began, clearing his throat. As the words began to flow, the hoarseness in his voice smoothed out and he sounded almost normal again. Harry Pearce, in control – what Ruth was used to. "I think Jane renovated it five years ago, to give them more space when Graham moved back in the first time." They climbed steadily, Harry coming out into the room and coughing slightly in the dust. "It's absolutely full of Jane's things."

"It's nice that you two are cordial enough for that," Ruth intoned, emerging from the staircase and rubbing her nose against the dust in the air. She looked mildly disbelieving of the nature of their relationship, rather as if Harry might be holding his ex-wife's belongings against his will.

He defended himself, gently. "We weren't, for a long time. An old friend died, five years ago, or so, and somehow it started us talking again. She keeps in contact, now, calls me every few weeks and we talk about the children." He nodded to himself, "I suppose it's about time we started setting a good example."

Ruth gave him a little smile and turned to look around her.

The room was, as Harry had said, completely full of Jane's things and boxes of Jane's things. It was a big square room, opening out to the left from where the stairs emerged from the hall below. Windows fronted both sides, their views of rooftops and the distant city, being too high up to look into other houses. Despite the walls being painted a very pale blue, too light for Harry's liking, he had taken to the place. It was nearly twice the size of any of the bedrooms downstairs and it had the added bonus of having an en-suite room off to the side. The other bonus, he had to push through piles of Jane's old photo albums to reach.

"There is a balcony of sorts," he grunted, pushing a few boxes to the side and edging through the space they left. Unlocking a glazed door that sat against the south-facing wall, he pulled it roughly open. "Just about five feet squared," he told Ruth, gesturing out at the small balcony, nestled in the lee of the outer walls, "but it looks down over the garden. It's a nice enough place to sit, in the morning, when it catches the sun."

Sometimes, if he was home and he had a few spare moments, Harry would climb up here. Picking his way through the boxes and the dust, he would stand on the balcony and drink his coffee. It was one of his favourite parts of the house. On the warmest days, he could almost pretend he was in another city, somewhere hot and far away, staring out over the rooftops. The walls of the house shielded the wind and made it feel ten degrees warmer when the sun hit. Harry stepped out, wincing at the cold concrete underfoot. It was not warm today, but it was still bright and beautiful.

Ruth followed him out, her eyes wide with delight.

"This is beautiful,"

Beautiful, Harry thought, might be an overstatement. Then again, Ruth seemed to have an attraction for old and broken things. Maybe the chipped and broken balcony was beautiful to her. He nodded to the deck chair set out on it.

"I come up here, sometimes."

"You like rooftops," Ruth mused, softly, padding over in her bare feet to look over the stone edge, down into the garden.

"I suppose I do."

She turned a little, throwing a smile back at him. "We have our best conversations on rooftops."

Harry thought, silently, that maybe, one day – if he was feeling brave and she was, by some miracle, still in love with him – he might ask her to marry him on a rooftop. She might say yes there, he thought, watching her wet hair dance around her neck. He knew marriage was not really needed. After all, he and Ruth were bonded far more deeply than he had been to Jane, when they married. They were already so much more than anything he had ever experienced and marriage was just a word, really; just a ceremony, just a ring around her finger that would let the world know that they had chosen each other. He didn't need it, but it would feel good, he thought, with a sigh. It would feel like a glorious indulgence, after so many years pretending not to belong to one another.

Stepping up behind her, he pressed his body gently against her back, murmuring that she would be getting cold out here, with her bare feet and wet hair. Ruth told him that she didn't mind, not yet. Her breath clouded the hair as she did so. They stood for a while, keeping each other warm.

.

The rest of the day was spent with wonderful lack of purpose; sauntering around Harry's house drinking coffee until Ruth's hair dried, joking about Harry's lack of a hairdryer (and lack of need of one), Harry trying and failing to explain how his alarm system worked, followed by a brief and rather adolescent onslaught of kissing pressed against his hallway wall.

When they decided that they finally needed to eat, they wrapped themselves back up in their many layers, Ruth borrowing a scarf against the cold, and walked the short distance down to a local cafe. They talked and picked at various bakery items, over an hour or so, Harry learning that Ruth hated almonds, Ruth learning that Harry would eat absolutely anything with chocolate in its name. Then, they sauntered on - towards Ruth's house, this time.

In all honesty, Harry supposed, they could have called a taxi but he was enjoying the walk so much that he didn't want it to end and he thought his companion might feel the same. They continued to wander slowly on, then, with no time constraints for once. Every now and then, their gloved hands would brush as they swung at their sides. Just once, as they leant against a park railing, staring into a pond, Ruth let her fingers slip inside his, slender fingers gripping him with tight possession. Harry could not imagine anyone he would rather be possessed by.

Magically, work managed to stay away. Harry's phone beeped twice, during their time together, but it was only email updates on current operations and nothing that Erin could not easily handle. Minor public transport strikes, disruption to an oil deal they were keeping an eye on, something to do with a White Supremist group, in Bradford; Harry did not reply to them. His Section Chief was more than capable of managing without him. She had done his job for nearly two months, after all. Besides, this was his time, his and Ruth's. He pushed work from his mind.

They took a long detour through the park, arriving at Ruth's house in the mid-afternoon. After warming themselves up by her gas fireplace and substantiating themselves with tea, they spent a long and enjoyable afternoon picking through her book collection and discussing their favourite novels. As the day drew on, they retired to her threadbare couch, with the tele on in the background, (not the news channel, never the news channel – that was just tempting fate), and wrapped themselves around each other. As Ruth leant into him, her hand sliding across his, Harry took the risk and initiated contact. He kissed her neck, gently, and then her cheek, and then her lips. The risk turned out to be infinitely worth it.

They made love in the last rays of the evening sun, more slowly than they had done in the morning. Bellies pressed together and limbs entwined, they wound gently against one another until their will power faded and their breaths became short and stuttering. Then, they let themselves spill over control and into ecstasy. Falling. Rising. Bliss. Afterwards, as they sprawled across one another, hearts beating wildly, Ruth admitted that this was probably the best rest day she had ever had. Harry could not help but agree.

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	15. Chapter 15

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_Chapter 15 – The best game_

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The peeling of the alarm woke Ruth so suddenly that she almost hit her head on the bedside table, in her efforts to silence it. Heart racing, mind not entirely focussed, she hovered stock-still for a few seconds afterwards, staring into space ahead of her. As it did every morning, her brain took a good five heartbeats to chug into gear. When it did, realisation hit. She was in her bed. Her alarm had gone off. It was morning and she had to get up, to go to work.

Her heart sank in her chest. Getting up was the very last thing she wanted to do. Every bone in her body was calling out to ignore the alarm and retreat back into the warm hollow of the blankets, beside her warm lover. Lowering herself back to the mattress, she buried her face in her pillow, letting out a low groan. This was unfair, she thought, grumpily. The night had passed so quickly, it felt as if she had only just closed her eyes. She was still so tired. She didn't want to get up and struggle into work through the horrid rush-hour traffic. Her bed felt so nice. Harry felt so good. His scent was in her sheets and across her body. They were still partly entangled, his hand thrown over her lower back, his foot slipped underneath her calf muscle, toes pressing into her skin gently. As she began to doze off, they prodded her gently.

"Ruth?"

"What?" she mumbled, into the pillow. She was so comfortable. The thought that she had to leave soon was beginning to drift away. Her brain was already heading back to sleep and all that made sense was the immediate and sensation. She was here. And Harry was here. And it was warm and safe and smelt nice and her body was soft and relaxed after their lovemaking the night before.

"You have to get up," Harry told her, softly.

Rolling over onto her side, Ruth forced her eyes open again and stretched out her arms, wrists brushing across the top of Harry's shoulder as he lay next to her. Despite not having to rise himself - he was not due into work until this afternoon - his eyes were open and he was watching her intently. Morning person, thought Ruth, darkly. He was a blasted morning person and this lie-in would be wasted on him. Who took one and a half day weekends anyway, she asked herself, what particular brand of madness did Harry subscribe to?

"When do you have to be in?" she asked him, through a half-muffled yawn.

Harry yawned back, then reached out and touched her cheek, presumably brushing away an eyelash or something which had fallen there. "One," he told her, softly. "What time is it?"

"Already half six. My first alarm must not have been set," Ruth explained, letting her eyes fall closed again.

"First alarm?"

"I set two, one half an hour before the other so I can doze for a while." Opening one eye, she saw Harry frown in confusion.

"Why don't you just sleep until the second alarm and get up?"

"It feels better my way," Ruth groaned, shifting closer, through the sheets, "as if I'm getting more sleep."

"Technically, you're doing the opposite," Harry pointed out, ever the logical, ever the pragmatist.

Grumbling that that wasn't the point, Ruth reached out and found his soft side under the duvet. His skin was incredibly warm. As she touched him, too, he seemed to move towards her a little. Encouragement to keep going, perhaps. Harry liked to be touched. It was something Ruth had not been expecting - not that she had expected him _not_ to like it, she had just been surprised that he enjoyed the stroking, foreplay part of sex just as much as the penetrative part. It seemed to go rather against his pragmatic nature. Or, perhaps, she reasoned, it was just one of the few indulgences he allowed himself.

She traced up along his ribs and then down again, to his hip, pausing there as she analysed the situation. To her mild disappointment, she concluded that there really wasn't enough time to turn this into a sexual game. In half an hour, she had to be out of the shower, or else she would be late. There was no point in tempting fate. She and Harry's first encounter had been brief enough, but the second time had lasted for a good long while and she was in that sleepy, slow sort of mood this morning. It wouldn't do to be late to work because she was screwing her boss. No, she decided, giving Harry one last rub with her fingertips, she would get up.

"Okay," she yawned and stretched one last time.

Harry's hand tightened around her waist and he started to stir too.

"Don't get up," she told him, quickly, then felt a little unsure for telling him not to do something. Underneath it all, their newfound ease with one another and their growing intimacy, he was still her boss and she felt a little awkward telling him to do anything, yet, even outside Thames House. "You don't have to go in until later," she explained, giving a little smile. "You don't have to get up if you don't want to."

Harry looked a little inquisitive.

"I mean," Ruth tried to explain, "you can stay. You don't have to leave just because I do."

There was a semi-awkward, semi-touched little moment, where he realised she meant staying on in her house, then he shook his head.

"I wouldn't want to impose. I'll just head back home."

"Harry!"

She must have sounded genuinely distressed because a smile drew across his face and he leant over, pressing a hard kiss against her lips. "Okay," he hummed, soothingly, against her. "I'll stay, if you're sure that's okay."

"It's okay," she told him, feeling a rush of delight. Harry, staying in her bed, in her house.

As she brushed her hand once more over his skin, their one long kiss elongated into several shorter kisses – trailing off into each other, lightening then deepening again. Eventually, Ruth realised they were getting nowhere fast and pulled her head back.

"Harry, I have to jump in the shower," she explained, apologetically.

"Of course."

He watched her longingly, for a moment, and Ruth considered asking him to join her then decided against it. She really did need to get moving. She had a terrible habit of indecision, over what to wear to work, and always took about twice as long as she expected to. It would be even worse, today, because Harry was here – to see her before she had time to gain confidence in whatever she had chosen to wear. God, she reprimanded herself, why was she so insecure? He had chosen her. He had wanted her for seven years. This was not some stupid fling that she had to worry about, this was her and Harry. They were bound together as strongly as two people could be bonded together. She didn't need to worry about clothing and she should feel confident enough to ask him to join her in the shower... maybe... sometime... if she was feeling particularly brave and they didn't have to worry about time constraints.

Dragging her mind, kicking and screaming, from the gutter, Ruth pulled back and wriggled out of her side of the bed, shivering as the cold air came into contact with her bare legs. She was wearing an old t-shirt, her own this time, but nothing from the waist down and she saw Harry give a little grin as she tugged the hemline down over her bum. Ignoring him, she padded off through to the bathroom. The spray of the shower was warm and tempting, but Ruth managed to limit her time in there to ten minutes. Afterwards, she wrapped herself in a towel and walked back through to her bedroom, rooting around for the bits and pieces she would need for the day. From the bed, her lover occasionally opened a sleepy eye to check on where she was but, for the most part, he seemed content to doze on. It was a strange feeling, their new view into each other's private lives, but Ruth found herself quite enjoying it.

Pulling on some appropriate clothing, she gave him one last, longing look before heading downstairs to dry her hair. A little thrill grew in her stomach, as she spotted Harry's things sitting alongside hers, on the kitchen table. His coat, his shoes, his wallet and keycard sitting on top of her gloves. Tearing her mind from the glorious domesticity of the moment, she turned her attention to making some breakfast. Toast was all she really had time for, so she made a pieced and wolfed it down as she did a quick check of the news channels, confirming that nothing completely terrible had happened, in her day off. Usually, at this point in the morning, she mused, she would be half longing to head into work – just to see Harry. With him upstairs, however, the pull of Thames House was greatly diminished.

Finishing her toast and pulling on her boots and coat, she made sure she had her keycard in her bag before heading back upstairs, bearing a cup of coffee she had made for Harry. Entering the bedroom softly, she tip-toed over and placed it on the bedside table.

"Hey," she woke her companion gently.

He rolled half over, watching her through hooded eyes.

"That you off?"

"Yes," she couldn't help but smile, just a little. This was so utterly domestic. She liked this. "Made you coffee. Its instant, I'm afraid, not sure if it's suitable for nobility."

Harry wrinkled his nose, in a look so reminiscent of what he did at work that Ruth had to laugh a little.

"Bloody knighthood," he mumbled, darkly, "wouldn't have accepted the damned thing if I'd known it would be so much bother."

"Shame..." Ruth laughed, softly. "I think it rather suits you." She leant in and, managing to step over her doubts, kissed him lightly on the lips. "Sir Harry."

He tried to maintain the grumpy frown, but failed dismally, his eyes flashing when she used his title. He might get annoyed with the reaction to his knighthood, Ruth thought, but he certainly liked to hear it falling from her lips. Maybe sometime...

She stopped short on that thought and dragged her mind out of the gutter, again, with a little shake of her head.

"I've got to go," she told Harry, as neutrally as she could manage – trying not to let him see that all she wanted, in the world, was to stay. "Erin has been on her own, with a skeleton crew and Calum Reid, for a day and a half. She'll be nearing breaking point."

Harry smiled.

"I'll see you later."

Ruth nodded and hovered beside the bed for a moment, before pulling a scarf and her keys free from her pocket. She lay the scarf on top of Harry and thanked him for its use them told him she would post the keys back through the letter box and he could bring them in to her, later. Harry agreed. Giving him one last nod, Ruth managed to tear herself away and walk back through her flat, heels clicking loudly against the hardwood floors.

She left by the front door and posted the keys as she had said, wondering if anyone on the Grid would notice them exchanging them, later. The brief thrill of worry it caused her, however, paled in comparison to the warmth of knowing that Harry was comfortably sleeping in her bed. So, she brushed it away and headed in.

.

Most days, Ruth took the bus, so she was used to the bustling, shouldering rush-hour crowd. She could not help but think, however, as she pushed her way through a group of angry civil servants, that the morning traffic was a little angrier than usual. The bus driver was not one she recognised and he did not seem to be quiet as efficient as his predecessor, almost missing several stops and pulling out into the wrong lane of traffic once. By the time she arrived at work, then, Ruth's glow of blissful happiness had diminished somewhat. After slogging through security and up the stairs, (the lifts being out of action due to some mystery involving a prisoner transport and Section C), she was almost back to her usual dire self.

Stepping through the security doors, she nearly collided with Calum Reid heading the other way.

"And a good morning to you," the indignant officer replied, raising an eyebrow.

Ruth shot him an apologetic glance. "Sorry," she said again, "traffic was a nightmare getting in and I overslept." She just about managed to keep the redness from her cheeks as her mind drifted back to the very naked Harry in her bed and everything they had been up to, the night previous – in sordid detail.

Calum, caught up in his own thoughts, luckily seemed not to notice. He had turned his attention downwards, to the file in his hand, and was scanning a paragraph with a frown.

"Ever heard of Jordan Milligan?" he asked aloud.

Ruth shook her head.

"Son of Ellis Milligan?"

That struck some distant memory.

"I've heard of the father. He was involved in the British National Socialist Movement in the eighties," she recalled. "We researched the BNSM and its captains years ago, when the Carters were running an operation inside a far-right party. From what I remember," she frowned, concentrating hard, "Ellis Milligan was a big man, locally, but without much clout in the larger group. He went to prison in eighty nine for an altercation involving two young Pakistani men at a football game."

"Yes," Calum nodded. "Bashed one of their heads in and crippled the other. Went down for murder one and GBH, just a year after his son was born, and died seven years later of a heart attack. Unfortunately, twenty-four year old Jordan Milligan has followed in his father's footsteps," Calum explained. "He seems to have a few more brain cells that dad, however..." the young officer frowned. "He's more of a political animal altogether and a little group he has formed is organised enough to worry Special Branch. I'm supposed to be coming up with a solution."

"Solution?" Ruth echoed, with a slightly raised eyebrow. Solution generally meant something sinister, when the instruction came down from higher management.

"I think I'm supposed to become a bigot, for a while... find out where their weaknesses lie and mess up their well-oiled machine."

"Right." Personally, Ruth thought Dimitri would be a better option for going undercover. Neither of them sounded as convincingly working class as Adam Carter could manage, but at least Dimitri didn't look like he had come straight from Oxford. Still, if Harry had signed off on this, she supposed he had a valid plan in mind. "Hope it works out."

"You're not on this, then?" Calum asked her, looking back up from his file.

Ruth shook her head.

"I'm still looking into Torrance Wood and helping Tariq handle the increased Surveillance, for our joint operation with Six, downtown."

A suspected cell leader, broken off from his regular group of comrades. Six were hoping to turn him but seemed to require more detailed information of his daily routine before approaching them their selves. Knowing that MI5 had nothing better to do that sit on their potential assets, they had made the request last week. Harry had seethed and ranted and eventually admitted the man would be an excellent intelligence capture and agreed, on the condition he could be loaned back to them in the future. People as chess pieces.

"Oh, the joys," Calum sighed. "Well, I'll see you later. I'm off to pick up a wardrobe and requisition some junior officers as backup."

Ruth nodded.

"See you this afternoon?"

"No, I have finally have that firearms re-qualification." Calum gave her a brief grin. "I'll be back in tomorrow morning, though, to brief with Harry before the operation. I'll see you if you're in before eight."

Ruth shot him a taut smile, thinking back to what Harry had said about Calum wanting to be James Bond. She hoped he would be careful, in the middle of a White Supremist group, with his sarcastic ways and easy, public schoolboy charm.

"Well good luck," she bid him, "and don't try and be a hero, in there."

"What? Firearms training?"

"No." The real thing.

Giving her a long-suffering look, the sort a teenage boy gives his over-protective older sister, Calum nodded. "I'll be careful," he told her, grudgingly. "They're just angry young almost-fascists who started talking to the wrong people. We'll steer them back onto the path of their own destruction and all will be well."

They parted ways and Ruth retreated to her desk, finding her in-tray absolutely packed with folders and forms. Muttering 'fabulous' to herself, she sat down and began to dig through them, sorting them into piles. On the bottom went requests for translations, followed by forms which concerned assets information and officer reports. Of the reports, she put Dimitri's on the top, to read first. His handwriting was the least legible and she would need the most concentration to read it. Thinking of _how much_ she would miss this part of her job, if she went to work for the Home Secretary, Ruth hung her coat over the back of her chair and set herself to work.

The morning was taken up with filing and interpretation of surveillance intelligence. The joint operation with Six was going as well as could be expected. The officer that the SIS had left to liaise was unsatisfied with the number of personnel on the case, wanted Five to have a translator on standby – rather than couriering the tapes over to them to decipher – and needed a better camera angle on the target's back door. Typically, Ruth could only actually address one of his requests, but she did her best to explain it in a calm and comforting manner. She couriered a quick message through to Tariq to tell him that the camera angle would need to be fixed then made the necessary call to their counterparts, across the River, to assure them that all was well. These were the little parts of her job but Ruth knew, from experience, that it was easier to do it herself and get it done right than go through the struggle of getting one of the junior officers to do it. The five minutes she would save was not worth the phone calls and the paperwork.

The hours passed quickly as she moved on to the field reports, entering their details into databases and checking for connections. One coffee break and eleven o' clock gone, Ruth finally found her in-tray empty and no immediate chatter come in. Seizing her spare moment with enthusiasm, she turned her attention to the Torrance Wood case, flicking once more through the report she had compiled, for the Home Secretary.

There was something about the case which still confused her. The motives for the attacks on Wood still seemed unclear. Sure enough, the SIS had sent over information detailing his involvement on several important energy deals, but Ruth could not pick out any of them in which Torrance Wood's involvement was completely necessary. And, surely, none of the deals were worth killing for. No, the attack at the embassy in Shanghai felt personal, to Ruth. The bombers had situated their attack underneath the Consul's living quarters, in the embassy, which implied to Ruth that whomever had planned it had been inside, before. Of course, there was always the possibility that the layout could be obtained through the black market – Ruth was not naive – but there was more than knowing the layout. The bombers had known guard changes too, and the security codes for all the doors. It felt like an inside job, but the security staff had all been cleared of connection. So a connection to the Consul himself, then?

Because of her confusion, Ruth had decided to occupy any spare moments she had running down possible links. The three young men who had brought the bomb to the embassy had been assumed to be anti-British extremists by the original MSS/SIS mixed investigation team but the revised report, that Six had sent Ruth a few days ago, mentioned (in the small addendum to the bottom of the page) that they had found no further evidence of this theory. Hired mercenaries were the next best guess but it was agreed, by all involved, that that theory was inconsistent with the nature of their demise. The three men had blown themselves up with materials which had not been designed as suicide bombs. Upon closer forensic examination, their grand exit rather looked like a mistake. Ruth, for one, suspected that their Semtex had been intended for taking out the supporting wall, under the Consul's bedroom, not the bomber's chests.

But, if they were not extremists or mercenaries, then what were they? So far, Ruth had found nothing. The SIS report said that two of the men had links to a couple of criminals in the area, some who ran drugs and another involved in the illegal firearms trade, but nothing particularly incriminating. Calling up a sympathetic ear at the MSS, she requested extensive CCTV footage from around the embassy, for the last five months, hoping to find a link. As of yet, however, she had not even heard back as to whether she would be receiving the footage. The Chinese were very particular about sharing their intelligence and, with every day that passed, the likelihood of their answer being a positive one was dwindling. Still, Ruth thought, she had to try. She could hardly leave the operation hanging in the hands of Juliet Shaw. That woman was not to be trusted, whatever Zoe thought.

Thoughts of Zoe prompted Ruth to check her watch. It was half past twelve. She had called earlier that morning and arranged to go over to the safehouse to talk, over lunchtime. She would have to get moving soon, if she wanted to make it in time.

It was probably not the most relaxing way to spend lunch, she mused, as she began to minimise her screens, saving only those which she would come back to later. Meeting Zoe would undoubtedly mean running into Juliet Shaw and that was really the last thing Ruth wanted to do, today. Selfishly, she didn't even want Will North to be there. She just wanted some time with Zoe. They had barely had a chance to talk the other night and there was so much more Ruth wanted to ask her. It was silly, she knew, but she wanted to grab one while she still had the chance. There were so few of them left, from the old days. Zoe, she, Malcolm and Harry; the rest were all dead and gone. God, thought Ruth with a start, she would have to tell Malcolm that Zoe was back – not now, obviously, but when all of this was over, when Zoe had got her passport and Juliet had been shipped off to prison.

Gathering her files into a stack, she grabbed her coat off the back of her chair, bid good afternoon to Erin who was sweeping about the place with a frown on her face and two junior officers in tow, and slunk out the security doors before anyone could grab hold of her and ask her questions about GCHQ transcripts in Mandarin.

.

She made her way across town in a taxi rather than by bus, feeling that the day called for a little indulgence. Her earlier experience, on public transport during the morning rush hour, had been explained by reports on the television of transport workers strikes across the city. Knowing how these things tended to get worse before they got better, Ruth decided to avoid the situation altogether and pay an extortionate fee, instead, to be ferried across town. Her driver was a jolly Polish man who shared his entire family history with her, during the first ten minutes of the journey, before starting a rather awkward conversation about the Holocaust. As they arrived at their destination and Ruth paid him, she wondered why it was always her who got into these situations.

Arriving at the great door of the Chelsea safehouse, she smoothed down her coat and raised her hand to the knocker. The response was fairly immediate. No sooner had the brass ring connected with the hard wood below, than a shadow leapt up in the frosted glass pane. Ruth stepped back, a little surprised, as the locks clicked over and door swung inwards.

"Hello," she muttered, marvelling at the efficiency of the young man standing in the doorway.

"We were expecting you," he smiled. "Miss Evershed, yes?"

Ruth dug through her bag and produced her credentials.

"Yes," she confirmed, flashing the badge. "I'm supposed to see Zoe Reynolds. I mean, Zoe North." It was so strange, calling her that, though Ruth supposed it had been years and even if Zoe had stayed with them she might well have another surname by now. "I have an appointment at half one. I'm a bit early."

"That's fine. Come in."

The young officer stepped aside and allowed her to pass by. Ruth stepped in, pausing momentarily to wipe her feet on the doormat. The inside of the house was beautiful and expensive and she did not to be the one to track mud all over it. Looking to the young officer, then, she let him lead her through to the back of the house – to a room she had not visited last time she was here. It must have been the dining room of the old house, as it was attached to the kitchen, but it was converted, now into a command centre of sorts. A couple of screens were set up in the middle of the table, which was strewn with files and pieces of paper. Zoe Reynolds and Juliet Shaw were seated around it, brows furrowed. They both looked up when the young guard officer entered, Ruth in tow.

Zoe stood up and grinned.

"Ruth."

Ruth gave a little smile, in reply. "Hello."

"Is it that time, already?"

"I'm a little early," Ruth admitted. "I can wait, if you're busy."

Zoe shook her head vigorously. "No, no," she stepped forwards, brushing down her clothes, "just looking through some old files, checking if we have a connection. Nothing's coming up, I'm afraid." A pause, then; "would you like to go out for coffee, or," Zoe paused, looking over at the guard, presumably to find out if she was allowed to leave captivity. The guard looked to Ruth, then told them quietly that he could come along and provide security – keep an eye on them, in other words. "We could go for a walk, then?" Zoe suggested.

That sounded good.

"You could bring Dana along," Ruth offered, spotting an opportunity to meet the young girl properly. "Give her a chance to get some fresh air."

"Oh, god, that would be wonderful," Zoe exclaimed. "She's going mad, cooped up in this house – not that it's not a lovely house," she added, quickly. "Harry has been very generous."

Over at the table, Juliet gave a soft snort, which the other two women chose to ignore. Ruth, for one, did not feel capable of responding in a way which would be anything less than derogatory. Every time she saw that woman look at Harry, heard her talk about Harry, or even thought about her and Harry at all, she felt irrational rage swell within her. It was stupid, she knew, they had history and there was nothing Ruth could do to change that. Still, the woman could at least show a little bit of respect for what Harry was doing for her. Most men, in his position, would have thrown her straight in prison. Juliet was getting a chance to redeem herself and all she did was scoff and scorn. Harry deserved more.

Of course, Ruth added to herself, she was biased when it came to Harry.

Trying not to look too irritably, at Juliet, Ruth kept her eyes on Zoe and nodded. "There's a park just around the corner. It's not large, but she could stretch her legs."

They agreed and Ruth hovered near the door while the security guard went to fetch the keys and her old friend disappeared upstairs, to fetch her daughter. It took a little longer than expected. Her footsteps echoed through the cavernous hall as she moved about, presumably searching for some lost piece of vital equipment, such as a shoe or a jacket. Ruth heard the little girl's voice and that of her father, as they joined in the search, and a small bout of swearing from the former. Shifting her feet, she turned her attention away from their familial argument, towards Juliet. The older woman was picking through a file, her attention focussed downwards as if she were completely alone in the room. Ruth suspected her lack of interest was more front than truth. There couldn't be anything in that report that Juliet Shaw had not read ten times over, by now.

She looked older, thought Ruth, then chastised herself for thinking it. Of course Juliet looked older. They all looked older, now. Age was something that was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid. Over the last few years, Ruth had felt her own skin grow a little less taut and her body begin to give in to gravity. She had found her first grey hairs and noticed the first stiffening of her joints, when she had a very long day. Juliet had aged more, however. Perhaps it was simply the age gap she had lived – between fifty-three and fifty-seven rather than between thirty-eight and forty-one. Juliet's hair was still dark brown, but Ruth suspected it was dyed now. She had lost a lot of weight, too. Lean thing she was, now, with her muscles ropey beneath her pale skin. That could be stress rather than age, however.

As she watched, Juliet looked up and their eyes met, and Ruth saw that not everything had changed. The woman still disliked her.

"So, Ruth, I hear you are a senior analyst, now," Juliet commented, dryly.

"I was offered the position after I came back," Ruth told her. She hated explaining her return and strange promotion. It didn't matter how you said it, it sounded like a bribe. Harry wanted her back and offered her a higher ranking job than she had previously had, despite her being out of the game for several years – although, thought Ruth, she had probably learned more about being a spy in the years she had been away than in all her time at MI5 together. "I've been there ever since," she told Juliet, calmly.

"Ruth the invaluable," Juliet murmured, so softly that Ruth almost didn't hear it – not softly enough that she could miss it.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, skin prickling. Her mind was tensed, voice ready to snap. Juliet may have disliked her, for some unfathomable reason, but she was disliked her back and was terrified of her in equal measures. If anyone else had made lilting jokes at her expense, she would have bit back right away, but Juliet was complicated. Ruth did not know what to say – or whether to say anything at all. Thankfully, Zoe's daughter chose that moment to come bouncing back into the room, causing Juliet's attention to be diverted.

"Julie, Julie, Julie," the girl bounded over and hopped up and down next to her, patting the table with her hands. "Come to the park wi'f me!"

Without flinching or showing any alarm that the child was disrupting her files, Juliet took the little girl's hand, gently steering her away from the piles of classified documents. "I can't, sweetie," she told her, softly, seemingly unbothered to let Ruth see this other side of her. "I have to work. Your mummy's going to take you."

The little girl pulled a face.

"Mummy's booooring. She doesn't play any of the good games."

"Well," Juliet paused and then glanced over at Ruth. "You remember Ruth? You met last night. Well, she's going too and I'm sure she'll play any game you want."

The little girl looked over, considering Ruth in the openly judgemental manner that only a five year old could manage.

"Is she boring?" she asked.

"Oh no, she's very fun," Juliet assured her. "One of Harry's favourite toys," she added, in that quiet voice she had used before.

Ruth felt her body tense at that last part, but Juliet carried on so smoothly that she could almost convince herself she had imagined it.

"Go on, go to Ruth. Maybe she and mummy will buy you something nice, on the way home." Leaning in, Juliet pressed a kiss to the little girl's head and gave her hand a squeeze. "So be good!"

She gave the little girl a nudge over towards Ruth.

Ruth smiled.

"Shall we go to the park then, Dana?" she asked, nervously. If this child repudiated her, when she was so fond of a woman like Juliet, Ruth would lose all confidence in her own social abilities. Fortunately, however, Zoe's daughter was a very friendly sort. Skipping over, she took Ruth's hand without qualm and smiled back.

"I like the park," she announced, brightly. "We can play chasing and hide and seek and spies."

Ruth glanced over at Juliet, who inclined her head, slightly.

"Spies is the best game," the older woman informed her, confidentially.

.

Ruth and Zoe took the pool car, in the end, deciding to head a little further afield than the place Ruth had originally intended. They headed out on a northwards trek, winding through the lunchtime traffic and arriving on the leafy fringe of Hyde Park after half an hour of complaining, on Daniela's part. As soon as the back door of the car opened, the little girl was out like a shot, racing away onto the green slope. Zoe called listlessly after her to stay close, then turned and gave Ruth a shrug.

"It never works," she told her, sounding a little nonchalant about the whole thing. "Nine times out of ten, we lose her on these outings."

They walked for about half an hour, talking over work things and personal things in turn. The conversation turned again to Danny, at one point, and Ruth found out that Zoe and he had been close than she had thought. They had almost been lovers, a couple of times. There had been a strange kind of tension between them, Zoe admitted, a little regretfully, which they had never resolved. Fully sympathetic on grounds of unresolved sexual tension, Ruth nodded and listened.

Zoe went on to tell her all about the places they had been – leaving out the incriminating details of who they had worked for and what their jobs had entailed. They spoke a little about Adam and Fiona Carter and a little more about Wes and how Zoe understood now how terrifying it was having a child and doing what you did. It was a different kind of fear than the one you tasted before you were a parent, she said. Instead of being terrified of your death, you were terrified of the consequences of your death. When you were in danger, all you could think was 'if I don't get out, who will take care of my baby'? It was torture, Zoe admitted, being out there without backup, knowing that if she died nobody would ever know about it and her child and Will would have to struggle on without her. The pressure of being the sole breadwinner was taken off a little by Juliet, though, she added. Juliet had contributed far above and beyond what she ever needed to, to buy Zoe's allegiance.

"She's practically a second mother, to Daniela. She's been helping out since she was two," Zoe explained, with an apologetic smile at Ruth. She clearly knew there was tension, between Ruth and Juliet, and wanted her to know she was not intentionally trying to rock the boat – just try to explain herself. "I know Harry's having a hard time believing we're genuine," she continued, doggedly, "but we really do want to come home. Juliet's willing to do the time of a reduced sentence to have her name back, to be able to come back to the country she served for so long without having to be afraid."

She did serve her country for a long time, Ruth mused, silently. It was easy to forget, in light of her more recent ventures, that Juliet had been one of the brightest and the best. She had come up through training alongside some of the leaders of the intelligence world. She had trained others. She had given up the chance at having a husband and children with her whole-hearted devotion to the job. She had sacrificed and saved hundreds of lives – hundreds of thousands, if you counted the effect she had as part of a greater team. She had been one of them. She had given nearly thirty years of her life. And then she had become damaged, in the line of duty, and they had let her go.

Ruth did feel empathy, for what Juliet must have gone through, in those first few weeks after she was paralysed. Harry had visited her, as had a few others, but they were always fleeting visits – half hours before they returned to the clamour of their Security-based lives, lives that Juliet could never go back to. A month after the accident which claimed her legs, Ruth remembered she had applied for a desk job, within Five. Her application had been turned down, by the management of the time, due to her previous affiliations and her seniority. She was too experienced. She carried too much baggage. They determined that having someone of Juliet's stature in a position which would generally be termed as 'beneath her' would upset the flow of the team in question. So, she had been turned away.

After giving everything.

"I never asked, before... How did she get the use of her legs back?" Ruth asked, quietly.

Zoe tucked her gloved hands a little deeper inside her pocket.

"Yalta paid well and there was a surgeon in Japan willing to try an experimental procedure. She's had two more operations in the last three years but she has almost full mobility. A little slow on her left side, but the physio is sorting that and she trains, hard, to compensate."

Ruth stared out over the grass of Hyde park – over at Daniela and the young officer who they had brought as a guard. They were playing what looked like Daniela's game of 'spies' amidst the trunks of some old trees. The little girl had her hands clasped in the shape of a gun and was rushing between the trees, using them as cover. There was leaping and jumping involved, and a hearty dose of crawling across the ground on all fours. As soon as one of them would catch the other, their roles reversed and the game started over again. Oddly enough, thought Ruth, it represented rather well the circular thrill of their line of work. Chasing after one shadow then running from another, the adrenaline thrill and the incomparable rush of victory, chased swiftly by defeat.

That was their lot in life, she supposed – to run until they dropped, to sacrifice everything they had and all those around them, until it was their turn to stand on the block. And, on that day, their fates would be placed in the hands of their colleagues, the ones who fought and cried beside them, who were bonded through unbreakable bonds and yet would still not hesitate to swing the axe, for the greater good. To protect the people and the country, as was their role.

As Daniela did a convincing forwards roll, to get from one place to the other, Ruth saw Zoe's mouth twitch into a wry little smile.

"What a game we play," she commented, with only a little pain shining through.

The best game, thought Ruth, her stomach clenching within her.

She said nothing, however, just continued to stare out, across the park.

.


	16. Chapter 16

_A/N - Hello all. To explain the terrible delay in posting, I've been up at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (!) and foolishly decided not to bring my laptop. So, I have only just managed to get these typed up this afternoon. Anyway, hope you enjoy and my apologies for the immense length of the chapters (18 in particular). This is sort of the honeymoon period of the story and I'm afraid I'm going to revel in it before the excitement of the later chapters cuts in on all of our H/R time. _

.

_Chapter 16 – Meet_

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Three days passed without anything particularly terrible happening. No explosions, no damage to his officers, no particularly disturbing conspiracies discovered within her Majesty's government. Success on these fronts should have meant that Harry had some spare time to catch up on his mounting pile of paperwork, or a few spare minutes to catch a breath, but that was very far from the truth. In reality, he spent most of Wednesday and Thursday holed up in his office, on the phone to Scotland Yard, arguing over the future of some enterprising Islamic gentlemen who had decided that the disruption in public transport, due to a three-day strike, was the perfect opportunity for them to air their grievances with the western world.

The situation was a bureaucratic nightmare which dated back to three months ago, when the metropolitan police had begun to investigate a man who had ties to an organised drug ring. During the course of their investigation, they took note that he was in regular contact with three other men, who they assumed to be involved in drug distribution. The officers involved in the case had no credible tip-off that they had any intentions of terrorist acts until the day before the planned attack, this past Wednesday afternoon, when all three men vanished and an investigation into their residence showed evidence of bomb-making materials, rather than drugs paraphernalia. Panicked, Scotland Yard had alerted all of the Police and Security services, asking for information and assistance in apprehending their suspects.

The alert had only been on the table for fifteen minutes before the men were arrested at a bus terminal, by three brave security staff and an off-duty police officer who happened to be in the right place at the right time and have seen the men's faces on a memo. The terror attack – a rather nasty combination of explosives and shrapnel-packed casings – therefore failed, but the media were quick to get hold of the story and there was a general uproar about the Security Service's lack of preparedness. Blame flew around, hitting the proverbial fan blade, but blame was not the only problem. Even after they had all concluded that nobody could have known about the attack – (the extremists having communicated only in person, using no mobiles or written instructions and having their materials delivered through unrelated third-parties) – there was still the matter of what to do with them.

SO15 wanted a public court trial as soon as possible; the Home Secretary was adamant that they be retained for further questioning first; a Branch Chief from one of Six's middle east stations wanted a crack at one of the older terrorists who, it turned out, had familial links to an Al-Queda member; Harry wanted to string the lot of them up on London Bridge by their genitals. To further complicate matters, the Director General had decided to make his case his yearly show of how much he cared about the detailed running of his Service. With an irritating sense of entitlement, he descended on Harry, enquiring about his 'line of reasoning' and 'twelve-month plan' for the situation.

Harry really could have done without it. Even without the aftermath of last month's failed bus bombings, his department was chaotic. The operation Calum Reid had formed, to deal with SO15's alert to a white-power extremist group in Bradford, was causing friction. Within hours of them putting Calum undercover, Harry had received an angry phone call from Richard Neilson, of Six, informed him that the Secret Intelligence Service was running an operation with a fringe member of the group and would appreciate it if Harry keep his people from treading on their toes. Harry could not remember what he replied, to the request, but it had been something particularly snippy and it had not helped matters along. He was really going to have to muffle his hatred for the man a little, if they were to continue working together.

To top off the problems with his other operations, they were gaining absolutely no headway on the Torrance Wood case. The assassin they had been interrogating, in their holding cells – who was now moved across town to a specially built facility – was not talking. True enough, Harry had not expected him to talk, but he had been hoping that they would find something from fingerprints and facial recognition software. So far, they had a few tentative links through Interpol, but nothing that would stick up in court and, apart from the French 'Interior Intelligence' service, nobody seemed very eager to give up their security footage. The man with the threat on his head was a minor British government minister and the assassin had already been caught. Besides, Harry's eternal gratitude was hardly a reward for their openness and the DG wasn't willing to offer up anything more juicy as incentive.

It was always about politics, thought Harry bitterly. True inter-agency cooperation was just a fantasy. He knew it had to be that way, of course. It had been that way since Intelligence services emerged. Knowledge was power, so they held their secrets and sought to steal other peoples. It was what they did. It was what they always had done. Still, Harry was starting to feel a little drained by it all.

Coming back down from a long morning in the DG's office to find Ruth tapping away at his computer, however, made him feel a little more at peace with his life.

It had been wonderful, their gentle slide from being colleagues to being something more. Despite the chaos of the last few days, they had managed to spend every night together, since Monday, and Harry was feeling better in himself for it. It wasn't just the sex, though the sex was bloody fantastic, it was just being able to switch off for a while. Usually, when he returned home alone, there was nothing else to occupy him but his own fevered thoughts. Returning to Ruth, however – or returning with her, or having her return to him – was completely different. He got to think of something else for a while. His mind could relax for a while, while his body was given over to the completely physical. And then, afterwards, they were able to collapse against each other and talk or just relax, until sleep claimed them.

They were enjoying, fully, the new intimacies that their relationship allowed. In fact, they were acting almost like a couple of teenagers about it. Each night, they made up excuses to return together instead of heading home alone. They stayed up later than they normally would, sacrificing sleep for sex and other physical comforts. Watching Ruth through the glass wall of his office, Harry knew he wouldn't be able to keep up the pace in the long run. Sooner or later, they would have to slow down. They both lived busy lives and he wasn't getting any younger. For right now, though, all he wanted was a chance to feel good and human and clean again. With her.

A little smile ticked his lips. Sometimes, this still felt like some elaborate, beautifully detailed dream. It did not seem real that they finally had one another, after so long. On the other hand, they felt perfectly natural, together. Yesterday morning, for instance, as Harry had dragged himself out of Ruth's bed, leaving her tangled in their sheets, he had tugged at her bare foot and asked if she wanted coffee – quite forgetting that a week ago he had never seen her bare feet, or brought her coffee in bed. He made it all the way downstairs, in fact, before he realised that wandering around Ruth's house, in his boxers, wasn't something he had been doing his whole life. It was strange and wonderful, to fit together so well. He supposed it must come from knowing each other for so long.

Walking over to his office, Harry raised his hand to knock on the doorframe, before entering. Ruth looked up from the desk, surprised by his sudden appearance.

"Hello," she greeted him, removing the pen from her mouth, where she had been chewing it, thoughtfully. "You're back early."

"Meeting ran short."

"A relief, I'm sure."

"It was." He smiled, the nodded to the files, strewn across his usually spotless desktop. "Putting down roots, are you?"

Ruth looked momentarily worried.

"Tariq needed access to several of the terminals and he said that you okayed me and Calum to work out of here, for a few hours, just while you were in with the DG. You did okay that... yes?"

Harry hid a fond smile.

"Indeed I did. Consider yourself okay," he assured her then glanced around the room. "So, has Mr Reid abandoned ship?"

"No, he's off to fetch something that the archives girl forgot to bring up."

Harry nodded and hovered in his own doorway, looking around at the place. He so rarely saw it from the angle for long. Like so many things in his life, he took it for granted. It was just his place, his office and he assumed it would always be that way. Seeing someone else working out of it was strange, even if it was just Ruth. It brought to mind the fact that someone would continue on, here, once he eventually left and that thought made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. He didn't want anyone else in his chair. They wouldn't do it right. Still, it would be a good five or so years before he started considering retirement and he had plenty of time to slide someone he like into the framework for his replacement.

To distract himself from his thoughts, he stepped forwards into the room, pulling the door half shut behind him. As he crossed over to Ruth, he felt her eyes trace him over, taking in the weariness in his stride, no doubt, and the anxiety over a hundred and one different things he had left to do in the day. She said nothing, however, just gave him a smile as he came to stand behind her, looking down at the piles of files and report paperwork that covered her desk.

"I'm afraid I'm going to need my office back, for a while," he told her, running a thumb over the edge of one of the files.

"Oh yes," Ruth started to move immediately, pulling her folders into stacks. A tiny line had appeared between her brows – the delicate line of a frown. His beautiful girl. "Of course. Um, I'll be out of your way in just a second. Just let me get these-,"

Harry moved slightly forwards, brushing his thumb over hers as he picked up a file and handed it over.

"No rush," he told her, quietly.

Ruth faltered as they touched, shying slightly, but Harry did not push for further contact and her worry quickly disappeared again. Giving him a little smile, she turned her attention back down to gathering her work together. Harry helped by keeping himself out of the way. All of the notes and sheets and paperclips seemed to have a pre-designed order and he did not understand it. Standing back, he watched as she scooped them all up, stacking them neatly in the middle of the table before turning in her chair towards him. When she was finished, she did not rise, seeming to prefer to look up at him from a seated position. There was probably some deep-seated psychological meaning, behind her choice, but Harry he decided not to dwell on it.

"How are things going here?" he asked, instead.

Ruth nodded.

"Fine. We have a procedure set out for Juliet's meet, at noon. Back up and surveillance are all out and set up. We have a specialised tracker too, in case we have a chance to light him up."

"Won't his company security be able to scan for trackers?" Harry asked.

Ruth shook her head. "We hope not. It's a new radioactive isotope. Tariq assures me that it shouldn't be recognised yet."

"Good. Good. Are still on for bringing Zoe in for her debrief at three?"

"Yes. I have security taking her husband and the little girl off, for the afternoon, and all the details you have received from the Home Secretary on her re-integration." She tapped the topmost file on the stack on the desk with the end of her pen. "...passports, national security numbers, etcetera."

"And you're fine to handle her?"

"Well," Ruth paused, frowning slightly at him, "you'll be out at the meeting, Erin and Dimitri are at the meet then debriefing Juliet, Calum is heading up to Bradford in under an hour, so unless you want to get one of the junior field officers to do it..."

"Point taken," Harry conceded, giving a nod. Ruth was the only one really available. Not that he wouldn't have chosen her anyway. She had more than enough experience, over her years on the Grid, to be more than capable of debriefing an asset. And she knew Zoe, besides. "Sorry to leave you all on your own," he apologised, softly.

"No matter."

Ruth smiled, tapping her fingers delicately, against the desktop. Harry let his eyes wash over her, dimly aware that the front to his office was glass and they probably shouldn't be staring wordlessly at each other if Ruth didn't want to others to know about them. Personally, of course, he couldn't care less if anyone found out – he sort of wished they would, actually. It would mean he could come in and greet her properly, rather than having to loiter on the far side of the room, contemplating her from a distance. That was, of course, if Ruth was ever going to be okay with him doing that.

Harry sighed. Maybe if he reassured her he wouldn't go overboard, it would help her feel more sure about telling the team. A peck on the cheek, keeping contact to a minimum, not talking about them on front of the others and making sure he kept things professional when it mattered. He could do that... he was fairly sure.

"Are you staying to listen in on the meet?" she asked, eventually, breaking his silent thoughts.

Harry nodded.

"I'll poke my head in for a bit but I have to be out again, by two." He sighed. It was one of those days when he spent more time off of the Grid than on it – his least favourite type of days. "I'm meeting with Paul Ashburn, about a joint venture up in Leeds. Someone's pants are in a twist about jurisdiction." He rubbed one hand over his forehead, remembering yet another thing he had to do, before the end of the day. "Need to talk to Towers about rescheduling a meeting with Torrance Wood..."

"I thought you were seeing him the other day."

"Something came up with his son, or his wife," Harry yawned. "Can't remember which."

"Well, he's very amiable," Ruth informed him.

Harry frowned.

"How do you-?"

"-I met him the other day, at the meeting with the Chinese ambassador and the MSS representatives," Ruth explained, with a shy smile.

Of course, during her loan to the Home Sec.

Harry felt a tiny, jealous twinge in his stomach. He knew it was selfish and irrationally possessive of him, but he was glad that the loan arrangement with the Home Secretary had been for one day only. He didn't like sharing his best assets – either personal or professional.

"Does he seem clued-up on the situation?" he asked, plunging on with the conversation about Torrance Wood.

"Well enough," Ruth nodded, "although I think he has a romantic view of what we are going to be able to do for him, in regards to safety."

"Thinks he's getting the presidential treatment, does he?"

Ruth looked reproachful.

"Well, I told him we would do our best."

"We always do our best, Ruth," Harry pointed out, a little playfully. "Unless my staff have been turning up, some days, and deciding to do a half-assed job of defending the country, without my knowledge."

If possible, Ruth looked even more reproachful.

It was funny, thought Harry. Two weeks ago a comment like that would have sent her into a flurry of explanation and blushing. How things changed, once someone saw you naked. Well, he countered himself, with a little smile, that was not entirely fair. Her change in confidence was more to do with them getting used to each another. Over the past few days, Ruth had had more opportunity to learn his expressions, his words and his little teases than in the rest of their time knowing each other. And, more importantly, she had studied him as an equal. She had studied him as a man – a man who happened to be her boss as well as a lover, admittedly – but that distinction of 'equal' made all the difference in the world.

"What are you doing, later?" he asked her, softly.

Ruth shrugged, blue eyes warm.

"Nothing."

"If you'd like to come around, I could cook."

A little smile tilted her mouth.

"I didn't know you had culinary inclinations, Harry," she said, playfully.

"There is quite a lot that you don't know about me," he told her, eyes holding strong across the room. "I have many hidden talents."

This was long-distance flirting, he thought, watching her expression shift and flicker. This was what they had started doing years ago but had never allowed to come to fruition, before they moved on to wistful glances and fraught, longing silences. The flirting was infinitely better, he told himself, sliding his hands into his pockets and trying to appear nonchalant. Longing had only ever made him feel sick.

"When do you think you'll be finished, for the day?" Ruth asked him, her smile wide now.

"I should be done with this meeting by three," Harry sighed. "After that I'll need to come back and talk through what happened with Juliet and, of course, what happened with Zoe but I'll be done by about six...ish."

"Barring national emergency."

"Barring national emergency," Harry agreed.

She nodded. "Okay."

"I could give you a lift," Harry suggested and a glimmer of hesitation sprung up in her eyes. For the briefest of moments, he worried that she might not want dinner, then he realised that the reason for her hesitance was a far simpler one. Leaving together. Of course. Fighting the nerves which had suddenly sprung up inside of him, he forced out another suggestion. "Or you could come over later," he posed quickly, "if that's more appropriate."

An awkward moment passed and then Ruth gave a strange little smile.

That would be fine," she told him, quietly.

Another ten seconds trickled by, in silence, then she sighed and rose from her seat. Gathering her stack of documents, she carefully lifted them and shuffled out from behind the desk, pausing just on front of Harry and tilting her head back to meet his eyes. They were wonderfully close. Harry was very aware that her neck was just inches from his mouth and the delicate scent of her perfume and her skin hung in the air around him. Subtle, slightly fruity, slightly sweet.

During the few mornings they had spent together, Harry had watched her get ready for the day, learning the little things she did – the reasons for her scent and appearance. She smelt of vanilla, for example, because she massaged it into her body every morning. She smelt of clementines because she rubbed a dab of perfume just under her ears and into the dip of her collarbones. She dried her hair to keep it straight but, because she tied the top back while she did so, the front strands always curled in a little. It was wonderful knowing these things but, for every little bit Harry learned, he wanted to know more. He wanted her to know him, too. He wanted her to accept what they were and feel a little more confident about letting the others know.

Inches away, Ruth gave a tiny smile.

"I'll be ready to tell them soon, Harry," she murmured, her voice warm but slightly apologetic. The bundle of files in her arm prevented their bodies from getting any closer, but Harry could feel fine the intimacy intended in the movement. "Just give me time," she asked him, softly. "I'm not trying to pull away."

"You have all the time in the world," Harry replied, with as much sincerity as he could muster. Though he was frustrated by her need to keep them a secret, however, the last thing he wanted to do was make any move that made her pull away from him again. It all came down to priorities, he had realised, over the last couple of weeks – priorities and compromise. He would rather remain her secret lover forever than have her leave his side. He needed her, so he would compromise, to offer what she needed in return. "I never meant to pressure you, Ruth," he assured her, softly. "Honestly, it was not my intention..."

His hand drifted down to her forearm. As his fingertips met her warm skin, he faltered slightly, not sure if he was allowed to do this. Ruth just smiled, however, so he continued, giving her a soft squeeze before letting his arm drop once more to his side.

"You have as much time as you need," he repeated.

A smile.

"Thank you, Harry."

"Okay."

A couple of seconds passed, Harry admiring the way the light caught his companion's eyes.

"You need to get back to work," Ruth eventually urged him, softly.

With a sigh, Harry admitted that she was probably right. "I'll see you later," he told her, wishing so very much that later was not so very much later. "I suppose I should crack on. Plenty to do before seeing Ashburn, even without Juliet's blasted contact meeting – although, I suppose, Erin is handling that. Oh," he grimaced, "and I need to speak to Deborah Langham later, about losing that junior officer to Section C."

"It was a logical transfer," Ruth replied, instantly knowing which staffing issue he was referring to. "What with the baby on the way and her husband being one of our analysts, it made sense to split them into different Sections. Less strain on the Service should they both be off at the same time."

"Bloody inconvenient, though."

Ruth gave a soft laugh, looking down.

Harry was fairly sure he had failed to be a normal human being again but, thankfully, Ruth didn't seem to begrudge him it.

"So, you can come over about half seven, then?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," she lifted her eyes back to his again, their blue almost smiling in the soft light. "Do you want me to bring anything?"

Harry shook his head.

"Just yourself."

That was all he wanted. All he needed.

Giving him one last little look, Ruth turned on her heel and clicked off towards the open Grid, cradling her files against her chest. Harry watched her disappear around the corner and sat down at his desk, pretending to be busy rearranging his phone while he surreptitiously watched her find her seat and strike up a conversation with Tariq, who was not quite finished at her station yet. He should have asked her to stay in here to work, he thought, feeling a little bad as she pulled up a spare chair and began to make do with a corner of her table. Mind you, she would have said no anyway. It didn't do to be seen spending too much time alone with the boss. Running one hand over his tired face and looking forwards for dinner, Harry turned his thoughts to work again.

.

The last hour or so of the morning trickled away into noon quicker than Harry ever could have imagined. He had only finished half of what he had planned to do by the end of it and the stress levels in his body were on the rise again. Calum Reid had not helped by calling in a rather disturbing update to the case he was working – a missing junior member of the right-wing organisation he was infiltrating, a man who he had approached as a potential asset. What with Bradford on the brink of being discovered and his conversation with Deborah Langham, over staffing, going poorly, Harry was not in the best of moods when Tariq popped his head in through the office door at five to the hour.

"What?" he snapped, shortly.

The techie faltered, with a soft 'uh'.

Harry glanced at his watch.

"Juliet?" he asked, softening his tone as a half-hearted apology for the abrupt greeting.

Tariq nodded, somewhat mollified. "We are all up and running," he told Harry. "Erin and Dimitri are on site, we have eyes and ears everywhere we need them and the trackers are ready."

"Good."

"Want me to patch a mirror of it all through to your screen?"

"No." Harry shook his head and clicked away his current screen full of pages before logging off the system. "I need to be on my way out, in half an hour or so, so I'll just come through."

"Right."

Tariq disappeared back into his lair.

Grabbing his keys and other assorted belongings and slinging his coat over his arm, Harry followed him, switching the lights off in the office as he went.

Arriving at the technical officer's station, he could see things were starting to get underway. Over the comm. lines, he could hear Erin running through last-minute details with Dimitri, who was organising the ring of security around the site. Three officers undercover, two running the operation and one very untrustworthy asset... it could be a worse situation, thought Harry, but he really did wish that he knew what Juliet's angle was, on all of this. He felt very uncomfortable throwing all of his cards down on the table when she still had hers cradled to her chest.

This really was his only option of gaining any lee-way on the case, however. The assassin they had transferred to a special holding facility was not talking. If he knew anything of his employer, he refused to share it and Harry understood his reasons why. It was in his best interests, in the long-term, to keep his mouth shut. In a couple of years he would be out of prison for attempted murder and he would be back on the market as a high-end assassin. While Harry was sure his employment prospects were somewhat diminished, having become infamous for being a failed assassin, it was still better than being known as a snitch. They had offered him everything they had, including immunity and a new identity, but he had only refused, with the polite smile of a man who knew the people who had employed him would find him, wherever he chose to hide, and that he was far more scared of them than he was of Harry – a thing which made Harry sympathise with the CIA's efforts at extraordinary rendition. This meet with Juliet's contact was, unfortunately, their best (and only real remaining) option. Still, that did not mean that Harry had to like it.

Walking over to where Ruth was sitting, at Tariq's right-hand side, he placed one hand on the back of her chair. Their screens were full of CCTV footage and camera angles from the surveillance van they had set up across the street. On Ruth's side of the desktop, a list of communications tabs was open, listing call signs and their GPS position from the tracker imbedded in their earpiece. All wires were up and running. A young man was waiting in a car down the road to try and tail whomever came to meet Juliet Shaw. Everything was ready. And Harry could hear the woman herself over the open communication line, sniping at the poor unfortunates who had been assigned to drive her to the destination.

"I don't see why I couldn't have taken the bus," she complained. "It would have been far less obnoxious than turning up in this ridiculous excuse for a car, which – by the way – has government written all over it."

"The plates have been replaced and everything will check out fine, Miss Shaw," Harry heard Erin assure her, over the earpiece.

"Still, this is my meet..."

Juliet sounded predictably put-out not to be in charge.

Harry did not sympathise.

Picking up a set of earphones, he listened to the last minute or so of chatter between two of the men running counter-surveillance, as they checked in and affirmed that the coast was clear. Juliet's asset was to turn up at twelve on the dot so Erin had decided to hold her back until one minute to the hour before letting her out of the car and driving away. The black sedan, which Juliet had so complained about, was decked out as a taxi, complete with Dimitri wearing a baseball cap in the front seat. It was one of their scruffier cars and it almost fit the bill. As Juliet had said, however, it did have a certain air of 'government' about it. Harry only hoped their contact was not paying too much attention to her mode of transport.

"Right," Erin told Juliet, prompting Tariq, Ruth, Harry and the assembled occupants of the assembled operations desk on the Grid to hold their breaths, "time to go."

Juliet confirmed that she was ready, Dimitri confirmed that they were in position and the operation was under way.

The microphone on the inside of Juliet's lapel picked up the soft sliding noise, of fabric on upholstery, as she scooted across the car and out of her seat. Glancing at the surveillance footage running on Tariq's screen, Harry watched her make a show of paying Dimitri over the shoulder of the car, before pushing the door open and stepping out. There was a split-second lag, between the footage and the audio, he noticed, but it was nothing too much to worry about. He had five officers on the ground, four of which within two hundred metres of Juliet. Erin was reading a magazine and eating a salad on a park bench. Two junior field officers were arguing over a copy of the financial times near the coffee stand. A third was listening to his ipod under a tree a little further away. All looked fine, all blended in, all were completely obscure to anyone looking for backup and none of them looked at all threatening.

Harry was not sure if he should be worried or not that spies had stopped looking threatening. In his day, most field officers had been well-built types with dead eyes and serious expressions – the sort you wouldn't care to meet down a dark alley. Still, it was a brave new world, now. The Service did not corner people in dark places and beat secrets out of them anymore. Not openly, anyway. Field officers were taught to use brain rather than brawn and political consequences mattered. Even Harry, who had spent his life inhabiting the grey spectra of the world, could feel the shift in attitudes. Times were changing. There was no black and white, anymore. There was no justifying the means with the end. There was no one enemy, to face, just a host of friends who you could not trust. Field craft had been replaced with technology and politics and security now walked hand-in-hand. It was a world where old spies, like Harry, were starting to become obsolete.

Not yet, though, he told himself, watching Juliet move across the field of one camera and onto another. He still had ample experience to pass on, before they dragged him kicking and screaming from his Section. The future might be changing but Harry would be damned if he did not personally assure than whomever was running Section D next would run it in the way he had in mind – the right way.

"Alpha-two?" he heard Erin ask, down the line.

"Doing a circuit of the block," Dimitri's voice came, in reply. "Will come back along Bayswater road and pull in behind the Thistle."

"Keep backup on speed dial," Erin intoned, a little nervously.

"Gotcha, Alpha-one."

Harry glanced down at Ruth, taking a little comfort in the sight of her face, bathed in blue light. She was busy searching through CCTV of people coming and going from the park, capturing screenshots of faces. They would not know who was important until later – if, indeed, Juliet's contact had brought back-up at all – but it had been a good idea. Her good idea, Harry reminded himself. She was a clever girl, his analyst.

On the screen, Juliet was making her way across the park. Winding her way down one of the well-used paths, she came to rest near a bench, but chose to remain standing rather than sitting. In the shade of a tall leafy tree, she nonchalantly watched around the park as she lit up a cigarette. She never smoked, Harry remembered almost fondly, except when she was working undercover. It was one of the few vices she allowed herself, actually. For such a vainglorious woman, Juliet had not done much revelling, even in her youth. She had not drank, or at least she had not drank half as much as he had, she had not smoked (again, not as much as Harry), she had always eaten sparingly, woken early and slept exactly eight hours per night. Before they had gotten to know each other properly, Harry had half suspected that she was a robot. The truth, however, was far from that.

Juliet had told him, once, that the smoking undercover was about more than having a prop to keep her hands busy. Rather, it helped her slip into the skin of another character – someone invincible, she had told him, someone who could drink and smoke and fuck as much as they wanted without consequence. When she was pretending to be this other woman, she could do anything. She was fearless. Perhaps that facade was what she was pulling on now, Harry thought. Or, perhaps, she had just changed in the years. Perhaps the woman she pretended to be had become her reality and the serious, fragile Juliet had been lost to time. Harry could but wonder.

At his side, Ruth and Tariq had their minds on more mundane matters, such as the reality of running the operation. As Harry watched on, they busied themselves with buttons and earpieces, muttering in half-sentences and completing each other's requests before they finished voicing them. Ruth asked for an adjustment on the resolution on the video. Tariq fixed it and gave her another two video streams which they had just been linked to by the local council authorities. Tariq needed a new frequency on Erin's comm. line, Ruth altered it and provided him with their team's GPS locations before he even had to ask. Over comms, Erin and the others checked in as the clocked ticked over to noon. Juliet was the last one to do so – tapping her microphone twice rather than speaking. Their target could be watching. Their target could be anyone.

As the appointed time for the meeting came upon them, everyone slipped into radio silence. Watching. Waiting. They were a good team, really, thought Harry, with a little bit of pride. His good team, though he really could not take much credit for them. They had bonded and learned to work together all on their own, while he had spent the last year skulking around his office and snapping at them all (except for Ruth who, being the source of his morose frustration, he had mostly just avoided). Their success as a team had been entirely their own doing.

As Harry continued to watch his spooks shifting photographs across the system, to enter into facial recognition software, he felt the first twinges of anxiety nipping at his stomach. Hyde park felt too exposed, too large, for a meeting place. Juliet could fine well be leading them into some sort of trap. He bit his tongue rather than saying anything, however. It did not do to upset his people and they had prepared very thoroughly for this meet. He was sure it would be fine.

Leaning forwards, he gripped the back of Ruth's chair more tightly to distract himself. As the tips of his fingers dipped down into the warmth, between it and her back, his lover leant back a little against him. Comfort, Harry thought as they watched Juliet shift and check her watch on the CCTV footage screen. Comfort from someone who could read the nerves in him without having to turn around. Grateful as he was, however, he took care to remain very still and not distract her, as the seconds ticked by and the operation started in earnest.

As Erin identified a possible target, approaching Juliet from across the park, the station erupted into a flurry of activity. It was capturing screenshots and loading them into facial recognition software, for Tariq, and a rewinding of the CCTV footage, for Ruth, to try and trace the man back to his origins. Before Harry could even think it, she was on the phone to the relevant transport authorities, requesting street footage from the relevant cameras. Tariq narrowed down the search for the man, inputting the name he gave to Juliet, as the two greeted one another. One of the other junior analysts shouted over that they had a usuable voice fragment and they would run it against their archives. Ruth suggested they would get more done if they offered it to the MSS to run against their archives, too, as the man had a strong Beijing accent, but Harry quietly vetoed the idea, wanting to wait a little longer before handing anything over to the Chinese. They had hardly been forthcoming to them, after all, and such hesitance could mean something to hide – some involvement, dare he say it, in the attempts on the Consul's life. Though he did not have any specific suspicions, it paid to be careful, when you were chasing shadows in the dark.

Adjusting his earpiece to pick up Juliet's frequency only, Harry frowningly listened to her conversation with the target.

"I assume the funds are ready to transfer?" she asked, in that same haughty voice she always had.

"Indeed, Miss Shaw. I assume the pre-agreed amount will be sufficient?" said the man, who did indeed have a Chinese accent – though Harry could not tell where in China he was from, that was Ruth's area of expertise. "My employer wishes to express their gratitude for the patience, on your end. I realise that holding the package until I could meet you in person was hardly ideal."

"He's safe and sound, if that's what you're wondering?" Juliet replied, a tad snippily.

Harry could sense that she was eager to have this whole thing over with and hoped that the target only read in it that it was cold outside, though bright, and she was nervous about dealing in human life – not that she was anxious about shopping her target's employer to the authorities.

"And intact?"

"Intact," Juliet confirmed, sounding just the tiniest bit repulsed.

Again, Harry hoped her target did not pick up on it.

"Any hit on him yet?" he asked Tariq, quietly.

The techie shook his head.

"We've got a couple of good shots but it will take a while. I'm running against a database I've compiled from multiple agencies. It could take anything from a couple hours to a whole day... we don't know."

Harry nodded, leaning back over to Ruth. Her back was still warm against his fingers and now that the initial rush of the meet was underway her duties had lessened, slightly. The photographs of their target were being analysed. The voice fragment was clipped and segmented by the junior staff and she now had it running on several programs, including one which should tell her which district he was from and what his native language was – how that worked, Harry hadn't the foggiest of clues. It was more or less a sitting back and waiting game, now. That and listening to see if there was any more data to plug into their searches.

The end of her pen was back in her mouth again, Harry noticed. Her one bad habit.

Over the comm. lines, Juliet was still working through terms, with her target.

"I will save the account number for the money transfer into the appointed email account. Check it after four pm and give me the details of your account. My bank will check that you are good for the money you are offering and we can arrange for the package to be handed over, at a location of your choice – pending my approval, of course."

"Of course."

There was a pause. Harry wondered if she was going to push further, to see whether she could find out who the employer was who wanted their assassin so badly. It would be a risky move, because a real mercenary, selling people for money, wouldn't give a toss. But Juliet had made no pretence that she was a real mercenary, he reasoned. She and Zoe had been known as a two-bit corporate espionage pairing. Good spies, but not mercenaries. And not used to this. Perhaps she could pull it off.

Juliet did not deem the risk worthwhile, however. After finalising their agreement and accepting her mysterious customer's wishes on behalf of Zoe's health, she bid him goodbye and headed off across the park. Harry listened carefully to her breathing, picking up on the slight catch in her breath as she quickened her pace. To Harry's mild surprise, she sounded nervous rather than relieved or elated.

Lowering the earpiece from where he had been holding it against his head, he heaved a heavy sigh. He just couldn't figure Juliet out. Every time he was sure that she was playing them, that she had some terrible ulterior motive in mind, he was struck with the sudden doubt – the thought that maybe, just maybe, she had changed. He knew her, of course, and knew that a change in this sort was against her character, but he could not help but hope for it. Beneath all the resentment and the distrust and the immensity of bad feeling between them – over what both of them had done to each other, over the years – he truly did want some sort of forgiveness for them. Harry, for one, had enough regrets to shoulder without adding her to the list.

At his side, Ruth sighed and turned her face up to him.

"Extraction and done," she stated, with a half frown. "It's frustrating isn't' it, not being able to take him in?"

Harry sighed. "It's his employer we want. Not the man himself."

"True," Ruth admitted.

They both turned to Tariq.

"Have everything you need?" Harry asked.

"More than I've had in the past," Tariq replied, optimistically, all the while tapping madly at his keyboard. "Once I have identification, I can work up who he is associated with and we can find out how he is linked to Consul Wood. Ruth's going to have a chat with GCHQ once we have the bank account."

"I have a couple of strings to pull," Ruth explained, "with an old friend in one of the Sectors dedicated to China. He specialises in financial intelligence. If they have anything on this man's bank account, I'll shake it loose."

"Good," Harry nodded, letting his eyes wash over the two spooks, getting the faint impression that his presence was no longer needed.

They seemed to have everything under control. Over the comm. lines, he could hear Erin wrapping up the operation, directing Juliet back into another spook taxi they had hired out for the occasion, telling Dimitri and the others to rendezvous at point. The meet was done. The target would be followed from a distance, for a while, to see if they could gain any more insight, but Harry was no longer needed – if he ever had been. This was not his arena anymore, he had to remind himself, watching his employees work. He was the big boss. He signed paperwork and made decisions relegated up to him. Only very rarely was he needed on ground level and it was usually to deal with past operations he had worked on, gone awry. He had been in his current position for so many years, now, that he barely noticed but, every now and then, he missed the camaraderie. Not the long stake-out operations, spent in the cramped surveillance vans, though... or the bad coffee... or the terrible pay.

Giving a short nod, he suggested that he should probably head off to his meeting, and 'well done' for everything.

"You seem to have this all wrapped up," he said, motioning towards the still-busy screens. "I'll get out of your way and let you get on with things."

Ruth's lips curled into a smile, just a little hint of how she smiled when they were alone but rather more than she usually offered within the confines of the Grid. To add to Harry's surprise, the smile did not vanish, either, when Tariq turned back towards them. It was okay that he knew they were friendly then, Harry realised with a small rush of pleasure. She just was not ready to admit that she was sleeping with him. Deciding that now was as good a moment as ever to push his boundaries a little (because he was always going to have to be the one to push, it was not in Ruth's nature), he gave her shoulder a soft touch, from where he had been resting his hand on the back of the seat.

"I'll drop Zoe's pass down with security, for later," he told her, before nodding a short goodbye to Tariq, who looked a little nervous to be witnessing their goodbye. They knew they were sleeping together, Harry thought, with a tiny smile to himself. They all knew, without him and Ruth saying a word. It was probably best this way, he smiled. This way they would react less when Ruth eventually did tell them. "See you both this evening," he nodded to his two spooks and turned on his heel, heading out.

As he crossed the office, he drank it all in – the acknowledgements from his employees as he passed, the occasional stifling of a conversation as he drew near. It was a busy time of day. People were coming and going routinely. Most of them Harry knew by first name. He had vetted them all personally, of course, but, much as he always intended on getting to know them all once hired, he simply did not have the time. He spent his life flitting in and out of Thames House, struggling to keep a handle on multiple operations happening in tandem. Know them personally or not, however, Harry's staff were excellent. It was not bias that made him think so, either. He employed fewer staff than any of rest of the Sections but they still had a higher case clearance rate. His people, therefore, must be of higher calibre. End of discussion. He really was going to have to get onto hiring a few more analysts, though, Harry told himself as he headed for the doors. Deborah Langham had almost jumped down his throat when he had emailed her last month's timesheets.

Crossing the last few metres of the Grid, he threw a polite smile at one of the junior admin officers, who had been regarding him rather nervously from her position by the copier. Then, making his way through security and out into the hall, he headed downstairs to the front exit. His car pulled round shortly after he emerged, timed as acutely as ever by his driver. Slipping inside the dark interior of the SUV, Harry made a quick call to Paul Ashburn's office, to notify them that he was on his way, then hung up and pushed his mind momentarily from meetings and the politics of the game. For a glorious ten minutes, he leant back against his seat, stared out the window, and pushed it all away – pushed Juliet, Consul Wood, assassins and politicians from his mind – and thought only of Ruth. It was nice to do so, he thought, without having to feel guilty. It was nice to switch off, just once in a while.

Giving a little yawn, he checked the time on his watch. The end of the day and their dinner could not come soon enough.

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	17. Chapter 17

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_Chapter 17 –A Change of Plan_

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Dinner could not come soon enough for Ruth, either, who remained on the Grid long after Harry had left to pursue his other responsibilities. Juliet Shaw's meet with her contact had yielded them two very important types of information. The first, naturally, was the face of the man who had employed the assassin – presumably on behalf of an organisation or individual who wanted Torrance Wood dead. This piece of information was useful enough, in that they could run it through various databases, such as police and foreign intelligence, but it was not nearly as valuable as the second bit of information the meet yielded.

Juliet had requested, to her buyer, that she be paid by bank transfer rather than through cash. She had claimed that it was to check he had the money he was offering, and as an assurance that he was not going to turn around and 'remove her from the equation' as soon as he had her product. (A briefcase full of money was easy to take back, after all, but a bank transfer was less so.) It also meant, of course, that MI5 could track who their target had been interacting with. Other bank accounts, lump sum payments; they could use this intelligence to try and link their target to one of possible suspects involved in the Torrance Wood threats.

While Tariq ran facial recognition and speech pattern analysis on the audio and video feeds they captured during the meet, then, Ruth was left to lists of numbers and phone calls to banking authorities around the world. There was no use in approaching the situation directly, of course. No international bank worth its salt would hand over customer details to an intelligence service, of all things, so instead she made enquiries to their assets in the banking world – learning what codes meant what, asking for insider information on bank account numbers of large multinational companies – being a horrid, sneaky spy, in other words.

It was hard, monotonous work and, by the time three o' clock rolled by, Ruth was very glad to have a break from it and head down to the front Security entrance, to fetch Zoe for their debrief. As she rose from her seat, however, she was surprised to see the woman already standing on the other side of the glass security doors.

Zoe gave her a little wave.

Locking her system and grabbing hold of the folders she would required, Ruth strode quickly over and signed her in through the security terminal, guiding her through the tricky process of getting her visitors card to allow her through the large sliding door. As she finally gained access and stepped inside, the two women embraced quickly.

"What are you doing up here?" she asked, as they drew apart again.

"I got bored waiting downstairs. Thought I'd try and blag my way through..." Zoe turned, eyes sweeping around the Grid – her expression half exhilarated, half terrified. "God, it's so different!" she exclaimed softly. "I mean, bits are just the same, but then the doors and everything... I can't get over it."

Ruth nodded, turning to look around the office alongside her. She understood, almost entirely, what Zoe was going through. She could remember feeling equally as overcome by the emotions of being back in Thames House, when she returned from her exile. Of course, the situation had been slightly different, for her. She had returned under far darker a cloud and, of course, and Zoe did not have a jilted ex-lover to add to the equation – just to make her feel more confused than she already was.

"How did you get up here?" she asked the younger woman, inclining her head to indicate that she should follow her through to the briefing room. "I thought Security were keeping you downstairs."

Zoe pulled a slight face.

"I may or may not have misled them as to my actual purpose here. They may think I'm a consultant."

Ruth supposed it should be worrying that Zoe had managed to breach security but, she supposed, she was a trained spy and she did know one of the men on duty. He had probably vouched for her, Ruth sighed, as she deliberated whether or not to tell Harry.

"You should have waited," she reprimanded her younger ex-colleague, gently.

Zoe shrugged.

"I figured you were all probably quite busy."

Her eyes drifted towards Tariq's screen as they passed, on their way across the office, and Ruth felt a nervous twist in her stomach. Technically, as Zoe was an unproven asset, they should have taken her around the back of the section to the interrogation suites rather than through the actual Grid where active operations were in play. Protocol dictated that she was to be treated as hostile until otherwise proven. On the other hand, Harry had signed off on them using the briefing room himself and it was Zoe, after all. Juliet had been taken to the debriefing rooms, but Zoe was different. Zoe had been one of them. Like Angela Wells had been one of them, Ruth reminded herself, then quickly shut away the thought.

That was not the same, not the same at all. She knew Zoe.

"Come through this way," Ruth nodded, leading her past the technical station and through to the briefing room.

The place was bathed in an eerie blue light and it was not until Ruth switched on both the overhead and room lamps that it took on a normal hue.

"Right," she smiled over at Zoe, loitering in the doorway. "Come on in."

Hesitating for another moment, the younger woman entered the room, walking once around the table with her fingers trailing over the back of the seats, her eyes drawing across the walls which had changed so much since they had last been in this place together. Ruth knew the changes too. The same crest on one wall, the new screen on the other, the glass that now fronted a third of the room rather than a fourth. It was perhaps a nice metaphor for their service and how it had changed, the analyst thought. More technology, more transparency.

"Have a seat," she told Zoe.

Zoe took a seat, choosing the position she had most often sat in during her previous tenure at Thames House.

Ruth watched her, suffering from mild déjà vu. It was strange, she mused, watching Zoe arrange herself and peel off her coat and scarf. She could remember walking into this room, on her first day in Section D – a nervous young analyst, stumbling over her words and struggling to hold onto the sheer weight of files and responsibilities she had to carry. Back then, she had looked at Zoe and Danny and thought how marvellously cool they were, how worldly and exciting. Now, she had been a spook for longer than either of the younger two had been. Next year, she would top Tom Quinn's years in the service and, two years after that, Malcolm Wynn-Jones'. She was not the new spook on the block, anymore. Only Harry would eclipse her, soon.

Once more, Ruth got that strange and fleeting feeling that she and her lover had never had a choice, over whether or not they ended up together. They had been through so much. They had loved and lost so many, failed and won together. They were the last two left, the survivors, and they shared more than any two people could ever hope to share. There had been attraction, of course, but that would have faded away years ago if it hadn't been for what they endured together. They were forged in this place, she thought, glancing through the briefing room window out at the Grid.

Giving a sigh, she turned back to Zoe.

"Right, I suppose we should get started." Setting down a thick manila folder on the desk, she pushed it over towards her once-colleague. "That should be everything you wanted to have a look at. I think we have a copy of your new passport and those for Will and Dana. National insurance cards at the bottom, driver's licenses and all the relevant birth certificates and other documentation in the folder at the back." Ruth reached over and slid a thick wad of paper from the front. "This is the updated version of the Official Secrets Act. You need to sign this before all the rest."

Zoe pulled a face.

"Good god, did you chop down a rainforest to print this?"

"Make sure you read it all," Ruth told her, then walked back over to the door. "I'm going to get a cup of tea. Would you like one?"

"Do we still have that absolutely terrible coffee machine?"

Ruth shook her head, with a tiny smile.

"No, but we have a new absolutely terrible coffee machine."

"Why is it that the coffee is always terrible?"

"I don't know. They had the same at GCHQ. It must be a requirement of government institutions," Ruth answered. "Milk and sugar?"

"Just milk, now."

How the little things changed, over the years.

How the big things changed.

.

They sat and worked their way through the entire folder of documents and papers, the whole process taking just under an hour and causing a lot of frustration for Zoe, who clearly would rather be anywhere else in the world than here, trying to regain an identity which should have been hers by right. Ruth sympathised very much with her position but had the unfortunate responsibility of making sure that everything was filled out properly. This was her debrief and she had said, to Harry, that she could handle it.

After they were finished with the paperwork, Ruth made a second cup of coffee and they moved onto a slightly daunting conversation about Zoe's future prospects, including several proposals from the young woman which Ruth knew she would have to bring to Harry, rather than address herself.

Despite enjoying the younger woman's company and looking forwards to seeing her again, on a personal terms, Ruth was fairly glad when Zoe left for the afternoon. It was exhausting, dealing with her emotions, at the moment. One moment her ex-colleague was jovial, almost giddy. The next, she would slide into an almost depressive state, withdrawn and staring. Ruth knew how difficult this all was, returning to a place you thought you had left behind, but she also didn't know what else she could do, for Zoe. She was not sure what else she could offer the young woman. Ruth had never been much good at social interaction, or comforting those in a state of shock or grief. She did not know what to say or how to act, whether or not to offer contact. As she waved Zoe off, then, she could not help but feeling a bit relieved.

She went back to her station, fully intending to work until the end of the day on the Torrance Wood case and go straight to Harry's, for dinner. Such plans were not to be, however. As five o' clock and home time came around, she was surprised to see none other than her boss striding back through the door, accompanied by the Home Secretary.

"Ruth, Erin!" he snapped, not looking up as he led Towers quickly across the room and into his office.

With a sense of impending doom, Ruth stood up and followed them.

"Any idea what this is about?" Erin asked, as she drew alongside her in the corridor outside Harry's office.

Ruth just threw her a shrug.

It could be any number of things. The fact that Erin didn't know meant it was not any of their current operations. Unless it was Calum's Bradford case, she reminded herself. The young man had left earlier this afternoon to go back undercover and Ruth knew he was running the operation by himself. Erin was not involved. Perhaps something had gone wrong. Her stomach clenched with sudden nerves. Had she and Erin been called in because they were Calum's closest team members? Was he injured? Worse?

She swept through the door of Harry's office first, nerves and tension already in place. What she found, however, was not Harry looking sombre, but Harry looking bad tempered. For the first time in her life, this eased her anxiety rather than increasing it.

Her boss was seated behind his desk, slouched back in his chair with the look of a man who had just endured a very long, very boring meeting and was now fed up to the brim. The Home Secretary stood on the other side of the room, peering out through the window at the Grid around them. He looked markedly unfazed by Harry's sour face. Indeed, he gave Ruth a cheerful smile and a 'good evening' as she entered. Another reason to feel relieved, thought Ruth, as Erin folded her arms across her chest. He would look far more apologetic if something bad had happened – if one of their colleagues were injured or dead. No doubt, this was just something to do with the Torrance Wood case. And, sure enough...

"I need you both for an operation, tonight," Harry sighed, rubbing one hand across his forehead. Ruth, catching his eye, felt their opportunity for dinner begin to slide away. "I know its last minute," he continued, "but Consul Torrance Wood will be attending a charity ball this evening, at Whitehall. And, as he cannot be seen discussing with the security services at the moment, without inciting any more media interest, it would be the opportune place to discuss how the case is going."

Ruth's boss took this moment to throw a glance over at the Home Secretary – the man who was most probably responsible for their being sent on this errand.

"Can't this wait until tomorrow, or be done over the phone?" Erin asked, frowning.

"I'm afraid it's one of those cases where the fate of the free world rests on my shoulders," Harry replied, sarcastically.

"We need a show of force on the case," the Home Secretary piped up. "And the next time Harry and the Consul are both free is next Thursday."

Harry's busy work schedule, thought Ruth, looking from her boss to the Home Secretary and then around to Erin.

"You need me on this?" she asked Harry, allowing her surprise to show through. This was not the sort of thing that Harry usually involved her in. She was not a field Agent, nor did she have extensive experience in political circles.

Harry nodded, however.

"You've met Wood before and you speak Mandarin. It will work for your legend, as part of the Home Office's PR team."

Ruth glanced at the Home Secretary and he smiled at her again, causing a strange feeling of guilt to creep up inside her stomach. She still had not told Harry about the job offer and, obviously, neither had Towers. It felt strange, sharing a secret with him, keeping it from Harry. It felt almost like some strange form of adultery. Would that be what it felt like, she wondered, if she were to take the job at the Home Office? Would she constantly feel like she was betraying Harry? No, probably not, she told herself. She was feeling guilty, now, because she was a ridiculous coward. She needed to tell him. She needed to decide what her answer was to be and tell Harry as soon as she made her decision.

"Well, I'm free," she told Harry, softly, pulling her eyes from the Home Secretary and her guilty thoughts.

Harry and the Home Secretary looked to Erin, who sighed and shrugged.

"I'll be there. Just give me half an hour to sort out childcare. My mother's in France and my regular babysitter has the flu. I'm going to need to rope some poor unfortunate into the situation."

"Dimitri has the night off," Harry offered, helpfully.

Erin looked slightly uncomfortable.

After a long pause, Ruth decided to step in, helpfully saying she had the number of a good service – one that Adam Carter had used to use, for emergencies, when he needed cover for Wes. Erin thanked her and the two of them excused themselves to sort the situation out whilst Harry went about the rest of his business with the Home Secretary.

Once phone calls were made and Rosie sorted for the night, Ruth and Erin dug out their most applicable legends and picked through the details. Erin would be playing the British-Canadian daughter of an oil baron, living in London dividing her time between philanthropy and other light social pursuits. As they flicked through her character profile, Erin expressed jealousy for her fake life.

"Well I suppose it does sound a lot more relaxing," Ruth admitted, flicking through her own. "Can't say I have quite the same excitement factor, though."

She would be pulling on the front of a public relations specialist, working in the Home Office, for the night. A graduate from Oxford in Classics and Ancient literature, who had gained further qualification in media management, the legend was close enough to her own experience that it was an easy one to play. Ruth was fairly sure she could ramble on for ten minutes or so about current media coverage, if she so chose, also, which could not help but substantiate her identity.

She was just explaining the finer points of her backstory to Erin when Harry appeared at their shoulder, minus the Home Secretary this time. Glancing up, Ruth saw him leaving through the glass doors. A little bit of relief crept up inside her that she had managed to escape talking to him personally. Sooner or later, she was going to have to. He needed to know if she was going to take up the job offer. But, of course, for that, Ruth had to decide herself.

Giving a little clear of her throat, to shake her thoughts back to the present, she turned to Harry and Erin.

"All set?" she asked, looking up at her boss.

He nodded, then winced slightly.

"I can only apologise for this," he told them, with the appropriate amount of remorse. "For what its worth, I don't think it is a valuable use of our time either, but the Home Secretary insisted and I suppose we will only have to be present for an hour or so." He sighed and turned to Erin. "Have you managed to arrange something for Rosie?"

The Section Chief assured him that she had, indeed, found childcare and made the requisite mumblings about it being 'no bother' and 'necessary, I'm sure'. Harry thanked her profusely. Then thanked Ruth – the sentiment sounding somewhat of an afterthought, as if he had always known she would be free tonight and agree to help.

It was not exactly special treatment, Ruth thought, as her boss began to run through the finer details of the operation – when and where they would arrive, how they would separate Torrance Wood from the throng, and what they would brief him on – Harry had always assumed she would be free, at the last minute, even before they were sleeping together. He had always known she would come when he called. He had probably known why too, but Ruth had doubted it stopped him taking advantage. She wondered, sometimes, when their attraction had become mutual. And how long he had used her crush on him to his advantage. Not that he ever would have used it too badly, she thought, with a smile. He was too much of a gentleman.

"Have you got everything you need for your part?" Harry asked her, turning and fixing her in his gaze.

"Yes," Ruth nodded. "All set."

"Should we come black tie?" Erin asked Harry, still poring through her legend profile.

Harry sighed in reply to his Section Chief's question.

"Black tie, backless dress, whatever you can think of to fit your legend," he told the younger woman, giving a small yawn. "Something distracting would be a useful, should we need one."

Erin looked up, pulling a slightly disgusted face, but agreed nonetheless. There was a reason she was brought along on every operation that took place in a room full of drunk middle-aged men.

Ruth watched the pair, silently wondering what _she_ was suppose to wear, to such an affair. The time in her life for backless dresses had been and gone but she supposed she still had a few nice pieces in her wardrobe. She would look nothing near as pretty as Erin would, of course, but she might be presentable enough to pass for a guest. Besides, she was playing a PR girl, not a London socialite, she reminded herself. She would muddle through, as always, target someone who looked like they were having a terrible time and talk with them – let her intellect distract them from what she was lacking in physical charms. She was good at being the smart, funny girl who kept the men amused while they waited for something sweeter to come along. That was her all over. Ruth, the make-do girl, the good-enough-for-right-now girl.

As Erin stood up, Harry rounded off his instructions, for the evening.

"Right," he sighed. "You both have one and a half hours to go home and get changed. I need you back here by half six, where Tariq will kit you up with earpieces and a wire, just in case. We shouldn't need them but it can't hurt to be over-prepared. Anyway, this should be a case of standing to one side and pretending you know more about the Torrance Wood case than I do."

Pretending would have nothing to do with it, Ruth thought to herself, hiding her inner smile. She and Erin knew the Torrance Wood case inside out. They went through it, added to it, scoured it and cross-referenced it on a daily basis. Harry's responsibilities being different, he only saw the synopsises and the relevant data. He only saw what he had time for. Ruth understood why that had to be, of course, and she knew he knew enough – but she could not help but smile a little at the arrogance of his statement. It was so Harry; pretend you know more than I do.

Glancing sideways at Erin, she saw that her colleague was sharing in her secret mirth. There was a slight glimmer in her eye, a slight tightness in one corner of her mouth. She said nothing, though, just as Ruth expected.

"Right," Harry continued, seemingly oblivious of their interaction. "I'll see you both at six thirty then?"

"Six thirty," Erin confirmed, standing up from the chair she had pulled up alongside Ruth's desk. "I take it, as London socialite, I get to break out one of the nice cars."

Ruth gave a little smile. MI5's 'nice cars'. They had been Zafar Younis's favourite part of the service too, she thought, a litlte nostalgically. And Danny Hunter's. She had only seen a couple of them herself, being primarily a desk officer, but they were very nice. There was a brand new Bentley, a ten year old Rolls, several rather pretty mid-range sports cars and a beautiful Aston Martin which Ruth suspected was the most desired car in the entire pool – its colour being only two shades away from James Bond's car, in the well known film. Spies liked to play at spies, thought Ruth with a smile. Spies liked beautiful, exciting, powerful things. How one earth she had got into this line of work, alongside these people, was quite beyond her.

Next to her desk, Harry gave a sigh, sliding his hands into his pockets.

"I'll sort out the request."

"Excellent," Erin smiled eagerly, a little too eagerly, then tempered it with a sincere "I'll be careful."

Harry looked slightly pained.

"See that you are."

Bidding goodbye to the two of them, Erin explained that she would need as much time as she could get to prepare herself for the night's frivolities – something that Ruth completely disbelieved, Erin being one of the most stunning woman she had ever encountered – and dismissed herself from their presence. As she clicked away across the Grid, Ruth felt Harry shift a little closer, behind her. Quite immediately, her body responded by tautening. The little hairs along the back of her neck rose, slightly. Her skin tingled.

"Happy to slum it, with me, in a normal car?" he asked, leaning against the back of her seat. "Or do I have to break out the DB5?"

Ruth could feel the pressure of his hand against the desk chair, feel it push into her back lower because of him. The need to turn and face him was almost overpowering, but she resisted. If she turned, then she would only want to lean forwards and to kiss him. And they couldn't do that. Not here.

"Perfectly happy," she answered, instead, to his question.

"Good," Harry adjusted his grip, slightly, the tip of his thumb brushing against her back.

Ruth shivered again.

Was this how they would be forever, she wondered, or was this just the stage between a non-relationship and comfortable ease? Already they were getting easier with each other, in their private time – the private time they were not using to explore one another's naked bodies, that was. In the sparing moments they had grasped, over the couple of days, they had actually managed to have full and enjoyable conversations, on everything from the weather to Chaucer. It was easy, friendly and fun. Perhaps they would return to that, at work, Ruth thought, optimistically – return to the easy way they had been all those years ago, before the stammering crushing and the smouldering sexual tension. Perhaps they could be act like friends again, rather than teenagers, once they burned through all of this excess want.

Oddly enough, she was not sure whether she was looking forwards to the possibility. While it would be convenient and proper and right, not to lust after each other constantly, it would take away moments like this when her entire body felt like it was singing for him.

Behind her, Harry exhaled softly.

"Sorry about dinner," he murmured, careful – Ruth noticed – to keep looking over her shoulder, down at the paper which held her legend profile. To the onlooker, she supposed, they appeared to be still discussing work. "We'll manage another time, yes?"

"Yes," she breathed, trying to maintain a professional appearance while her insides turned to butterflies and pleasure. "Another time."

"I promise I'll make it up to you."

He sounded so sincere that it broke all of Ruth's resolve not to turn.

"I know," laying her paper down on the tabletop, she half swivelled her chair to look up to him. "Don't worry about it," she smiled.

Harry looked relieved but still a little apologetic.

"I feel terrible dragging you both along," he insisted, "but Towers wanted a 'show of force' and he stipulated that I had to bring officers who looked intelligent."

It was a roundabout way of complimenting her, Ruth was sure, and could not help but smile a little. Flattery worked, whatever anyone said – at least, it worked in Harry's low smooth voice, with Harry's dark eyes washing over her.

"I don't mind," she told him again. "We can reschedule. Besides, it's not as if you asked me to spend a night manning surveillance," she pointed out. "I take it there's abundant free champagne at this function?"

Harry gave a little exhale of a laugh, looking down and then fondly back up at her.

"I'm sure there is."

"There we go, then."

"There we go..."

They watched each other for a few heartbeats then, clearly having to gear himself up to take the risk, Harry reached out and touched her nearby shoulder, very softly.

"I'll see you later," he murmured, lingering longer than he should with the pad of his thumb against her fabric-covered skin.

To Ruth, secrecy had never felt so very overrated than in that moment. As she nodded and Harry parted from her side, all she wanted to do was call out to him. As he headed back, across the Grid, towards his office, every inch of her wanted to follow. Her mind replayed all the ways he had touched her over these past few days as her body ached for him. It was ridiculous and she knew it – it was exactly what she had told herself she would _not_ do if they got together – but she could not help herself. As Harry disappeared back down the corridor to his office, then remerged on the other side of the glass wall that fronted the Grid, Ruth had never considered more seriously the benefits of having blinds and a locking office door.

Over the years, she had fantasised long and often about pressing him back against the wall of that office, kissing him like she had never been confidant enough to kiss a man in her life – spilling their bottled-up want and desire across his rather conveniently heighted desk. Until now, however, it had only ever been theoretical. Now, they were together and everyone else was drifting off home, for the end of the day. God, they could do it, really, couldn't they? He could shut the blinds. She could nonchalantly slip off inside. They could just-,

No, she told herself, giving her head a rough shake. They could not 'just' anything. It would be completely unprofessional and undermine all the good intentions she had, about them working together. When they had started this, she had promised him that their personal relationship would affect their working one and, so far, it hadn't. In the intensity of an operation, everything else just faded away and they functioned as they always had. They were brilliant, two parts of a well-oiled team, wholly professional and focussed on the task at hand. Doing something stupid, now, would be like throwing all of that away.

It was one thing, after all, thought Ruth, to be caught having sex with a girlfriend on MI5 property, or out in the field, (two things she knew, from Harry's file, that he had been reprimanded for, over the years) but getting caught screwing one of your staff, in your office, was quite a different story. Even if he wasn't fired, Ruth knew her boss would never hear the end of it and she could not face the idea of being used to undermine him. Not that she could actually go through with any of it anyway, she reminded herself. She was nowhere near brave enough to sneak into his office and propose the idea. She was far too scared of discovery and propriety and even rejection to try and seduce him against the wall with the lights dimmed low, no matter how delightful that sounded. Those things were something the woman her imagination might do. Out here, in the real world, Ruth was a realist and a coward – a coward who had to attend a black tie ball, she reminded herself, dragging her eyes away from Harry's office wall and forcing them back to reality.

She had to finish up here, for the day. She had to tidy her desktop. She had to find something to wear and get back here for six thirty.

Checking that her searches were running on Tariq's system, she locked her computer and briefly rose from her seat, to instruct the young junior analyst across the way to keep an eye on how they were going and to call Tariq over if anything started beeping or glowing red. The levels of memos and paper in her in-tray was insane but, as Ruth scooped up her bag and slung her coat over her shoulder, she reasoned there was really very little she could do about it, right now. Right now, she had to run home and slip into something a lot less comfortable but a lot more appropriate for being seen at a swanky black-tie charity ball. And before that, she somehow had to fit in a shower, a bite to eat, hair and makeup and probably half a dozen other things she did not have time for.

So much for a relaxing evening, she thought, cursing as she tried to fit her keys, her keycard and her purse into her bag at once and ended up spilling them across the desk. This was stupid, she told herself. She was the absolute worst person to chose to blend in at one of these things. Stress threatened to darken her mood but a quick glance back up at Harry's office calmed her.

Behind the glass of his office, he had settled down in his chair and was now on the phone, arguing vigorously with whomever was on the other end of the line. The wrinkles across his forehead were darker than usual, forming the beginnings of a frown. As she watched, however, he caught sight of her, halfway through a gesticulation and his expression softened. His eyes warmed considerably. The tiniest hint of a smile appeared around the corners of his lips. And all for her, Ruth realised, allowing herself to watch him for just another second or two.

Whatever fresh hell tonight brought, she told herself, Harry would be there to share it. Whatever indignities she had to endure, however many people looked down at her, she had him to go home with at the end of the night. And that was worth so much more than any of the rest, she thought, suppressing a smile as he turned his attention back to the phone and whatever poor unfortunate was on the other end of the line.

Shoving the last few items back into her bag, Ruth seized her keycard and started to head for the security doors. As she buzzed herself out and flashed her card at the guards on duty, her mind was already running through the night to come; whether or not she should wait to ask Harry what Zoe had asked her earlier, what she should wear and say to convince people that she was Rachael Hunter, PR consultant to the Home Office, how she should act if she came across Erin, in-character, how she could possibly manage to keep her hands off of her boss until they tumbled back into a taxi at the end of the night.

It was an almost impossible task, she decided, but she had always been the sort of girl who liked a challenge. Perhaps that was why they worked so well, she thought, as she descended through the building and made her way out, through front security, and down the road to the car lot where she was parked for the day. She liked the challenge of loving Harry, Harry liked the challenge of chasing her. The thought gave her momentary pause to be worried – for the moment when she no longer needed chasing – but she dismissed the feeling quickly. Things were far too good between them, right now, to be stirring up worries where there did not need to be any. Right now, she decided, she should just enjoy them.

Preferably not at work, she added, inside her head.

.


	18. Chapter 18

_._

_Chapter 18 – Lovers and Their Ghosts_

_._

Harry hated black tie events. He hated charity dinners, banquets, balls and everything else which resulted in having to dress up like a fool and wander around talking to people you did not know and hardly liked, for hours at a time. He particularly hated having to attend such things when he had far more interesting things to be doing – and his list of more interesting things was both long and very comprehensive. Tonight, he was doubly irritated by the whole situation. Tonight, he was attending knowing that, if he didn't have to be here, he would be at home, with Ruth, testing his dubious cooking skills. If it weren't for William Towers and his insatiable need to hold politician's hands, he could be pressed close against her rather than watching her from the opposite side of one of their MI5 pool cars.

An email, in Harry's opinion, would have sufficed to assure Consul Torrance Wood that they were doing their upmost. In fact, he thought it would be far and away the more obvious option. Surely if they were working hard on the case, they shouldn't have time to waste on ridiculous charity balls? That part was true, really. They were far too busy. It was not even one of the more busy periods, on the Grid, but still they had far too great a workload to handle. He needed more staff, Harry told himself. Despite hating hiring new people, he really had to attend to the situation.

Glancing sideways at Ruth, he wondered what she would have to say on the matter. Probably that they were getting a long fine, but if he wanted to assign a few more members of staff to the analysis teams then she would more than welcome it. She was a good worker, his girl, when she was concentrating on the task at hand. Right now, Harry thought, she looked a little distracted. A little nervous. Reaching across the car's back seat, he touched her lightly on the elbow.

"Ruth?"

He must have jerked her from some depths of a reverie, because she startled at the sound of her name, jumping slightly in her seat. When she turned and saw him, she pulled a slightly apologetic look and asked politely what he wanted.

"I just wanted to know if you were okay?" he asked, as the driver pulled up alongside the front of the building their function was located in.

Ruth glanced out at the building then back at Harry.

"Fine," she brushed her nerves aside, throwing him an almost convincing smile.

He accepted her answer for the moment, gathering himself as the car glided to a halt and it was time for them to get out. Stepping from the car, Harry adjusted his coat and made his way around the other side, holding the door for Ruth as she emerged. Through the long dark of her coat, he could not make out what she was wearing underneath. The hem was midnight blue and fell beneath the grey wool of her coat, but Harry had been left completely in the dark as to the rest of her attire.

She had kept the coat pulled tight around her from the moment she arrived back at work, earlier that evening, until now. Being naturally curious, Harry had asked her on the way over, but Ruth had just dismissively said it was 'something out of the back of her closet' and left it at that. Harry, who knew from his ex-wife that the back of a woman's closet was where she put all of the dresses that were no longer of any use but too expensive to give away, was eager to find out more.

He brushed a hand against Ruth's lower back as they headed up the front steps of the tall building, wondering if he should offer his arm, wondering if she would accept. Probably, he thought, they were here as friends, not colleagues and it was a perfectly natural thing for friends to do – wasn't it?

It had been a while since he had been anywhere socially, apart from work, and, though this technically was still work, Ruth was there. And he liked Ruth. Loved Ruth. Wanted to impress Ruth. It was probably one of those things he would ease out of, in time, he reasoned. Once they became more used to each other, he would not be like a nervous fifteen year old at a dance each time he took her out somewhere. That said, he was quite enjoying the rush of it all. There was nothing quite like the taste of something new and, though they had been coming for quite some time, he and Ruth were definitely still new.

She took his arm, briefly, as she leant down to adjust her shoes, and when she stood back up again, her cheeks were flushed slightly pink.

"Sorry," she apologised.

He smiled because she did not have to – never had to apologise for touching him. Right now, he would spend his entire day pressed against her if he could. That circumstances forced them to part was tempered only by the fact that she worked by his side and he got to see her several times every day, even if not speak to her. It was nice being able to look out, through his office window, and see her going about her business, arguing with Calum or Tariq, being generally brilliant.

"Inside?" he asked, nodding towards the building.

Ruth shot the thick white stone a slightly nervous look, but nodded.

She had no need to be nervous. In Harry's opinion, she was the perfect spy for these sort of functions. Perfectly composed and at ease amongst the high climbers of society, not flash enough to draw undue attention but pretty in an understated sort of way; she just fit. She was a very intelligent woman, he reasoned, it was probably why she was able to slip into different roles as well as she did. He had always believed that a thorough understanding of people and society was the key to being able to hide within it. Clever, quiet people made the best sort of spies. Admittedly, there was a place for bravado, in the field, but Harry thought that humility was one of the most admirable traits in a human being. And Ruth, he thought, watching her climb up the steps to the building ahead of him, was one of the most admirable human beings he had ever met. Brave, smart, kind, beautiful and his. All his.

He was an incredibly lucky man.

Climbing up after her, he wished he could tell her as much, whisper it against the back of her neck as they made their way into the pretty hall of the uptown hotel. He wished that he could slip his hand across her back like he wanted to, as one of the young footmen offered to take their coats and another checked them against the names on the guest list. He wanted to show off that she was his – that they were not just here as a pair of colleagues and friends – as their legends suggested – but as a couple. It was male pride speaking, however, and he knew it would make Ruth uncomfortable, so he held back. He understood he was not the prize, to her, that she was to him. He accepted that as the price for being with her.

As he turned back from handing his coat over to one of the young staff of the hotel, he caught sight of Ruth, minus her own coat, for the first time. Wrapped in dark blue silk, in a dress whose cut was completely understated – almost plain, in fact, but for a small embellishment over one shoulder – she was startlingly pretty and startlingly young. For a split second, Harry felt very aware of the fourteen or so years between them. Then, Ruth turned and gave him a slightly anxious smile and insecurity melted away into possessive pride.

"That's very nice, for something you found in the back of your closet," he told her, moving to stand at her side as they made their way through to the main function suite.

Ruth tried and failed to look nonchalant.

"Well, I don't often have the chance to dress up. I thought I'd make the most of it."

"You definitely make the most of it," he told her.

She blushed but, despite the tiny reproachful frown, looked secretly pleased at his comment.

This was the line, Harry realised, that he was going to have to tread – making sure he gave her just enough to let her know how he felt, to reassure her of the validity of them as a couple, whilst maintaining a professional distance on the job. It was not going to be easy. He was not a man programmed to do things by half. He liked to throw himself into situations and work them out as he went along. He was good at compromise, but he only ever did so after his own way of doing things was completely ruled out. He liked to obsess and lose himself in a situation. He liked to obsess and lose himself in women. Ruth would not let him, which made it difficult to express himself entirely. It increased the challenge of it all, however, and Harry was competitive by nature.

Making their way through to the main function room, they were confronted with the usual aggregate of charity ball goers. Rich heiresses and politicians, half-celebrities and media people, milling pointlessly around one another in strange formation. As Harry scoped out the premise, he noticed that everyone was arranged either around a table or along the path towards one of the bars. Animals, he thought with a smile to himself. They could dress themselves up in suits and silk but, underneath, all they were was clever animals and animals wanted three things; food, water and sex.

Erin was on the other side of the room, entertaining a trio of two young men and a slightly older one, all of whom were paying slightly more attention to her than they would someone without her physical charms. Proof of his point, thought Harry, turning to Ruth to share the joke. She was looking the other way, however, smiling a greeting to the Home Secretary, who was approaching fast from the opposite direction.

Harry felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. This was the bit when he was made to talk to people, he thought, with a resigned sigh. This was the bit where he was forced to make idle conversation and pretend to be James Smith, his cover for the night, a middle-level civil servant working at the Home Office. However, when the Home Secretary arrived and after introductions were taken care of, Ruth surprised him by stepping forwards and taking hold of the conversation for him. She, the Home Secretary, and the man who he had brought in tow – a young up and coming politician of his party – talked fluently about economics and the charity of the day for almost five minutes before, perhaps sensing that Harry and the Home Secretary wanted a private word, Harry's analyst steered the younger man away, with intent to visit the champagne table. Harry and William Towers were left in her wake, both watching her retreat – Harry with admiration, the Home Secretary with an odd frown on his face, as if he maybe had not recognised her and now did.

"It seems Miss Evershed is as useful in social situations as in the briefing room," he said eventually, turning back to Harry.

If he had said it with any more intent, Harry would have risen up in her defence but it seemed, from his tone, that the Home Secretary was merely meaning to compliment her as member of Section D. Hesitantly, Harry accepted the compliment with as much grace as he could muster.

"She is one of our best," he granted, with a little nod.

"One of your favourites, too," Towers said, with a little laugh. "From what I read in your reports, she gets dragged along to as many of these last-minute operations as your poor Section Chief," he nodded over at Erin who, in Harry's opinion, did not look like she was suffering too badly – what with the cumulative attentions of all the young and attractive men in the room, the expensive dress on her back and the expensive champagne in her hand.

"Ruth as been with us for over six years," Harry replied, as neutrally as he could to Towers' statement. "And we civil servants are not alike you politicians," he reminded him, with a hint of humour. "Favouritism is not quite as frowned upon. In fact, as Section Head, I can be as biased as I like."

The Home Secretary chortled.

"Well, I suppose that is so."

He sipped his drink and enquired as to whether Harry was having any. When the Section Head said no, he went on to point out where Torrance Wood was and suggested they wait another ten minutes, or so, until the clamour around him had died down.

"What with the attempt on his life, he's become something of a celebrity in Whitehall," Towers sighed, with only a hint of disgruntlement. "Honestly, you'd think he was single-handedly tackling world hunger, the attention he's receiving. I've considered having a price being put on my head just for the publicity," he joked then, perhaps realising who he was talking with, added a muttered, "just a jest, of course. The situation can't be easy for the poor man."

Harry nodded his sympathies.

.

The meeting came upon him sooner than expected. The Home Secretary had left, citing the need to disappear from the line of sight from the young politician who Ruth was still entertaining, and Harry was just considering whether or not to slink over to the bar and order a double scotch when Erin appeared at his side.

"I've arranged for Torrance Wood to be in one of the private meeting rooms, just down the hall, in five minutes," she said, as Harry took a second to marvel at how well she fit her dress. "We will have him for just under ten before he needs to be back through here to listen to speeches. Apparently he is some sort of chairman, on the board," she explained, with a look of extreme disinterest which momentarily reminded Harry of Ros Myers.

He missed Ros. More than the others, somehow.

"Good," he nodded, to Erin. "I'll be through in just a moment."

"I'll go tell Ruth."

The pair turned, searching out their colleague, but Erin did not have to move far. Ruth, apparently sensing their need, was bidding goodbye to the young politician and walking their way. She arrived at Harry's shoulder just as Erin was leaving, the two of them exchanging a polite greeting. As Erin clicked away, she turned to Harry.

"Are we good to go?"

He nodded then inclined his head towards the door. "Torrance Wood will be in the meeting room just down the hall, in five minutes. Erin is heading there now so we should wait a minute or two, make it less conspicuous." A moment passed as Harry appraised the beautiful woman across from him. She really did look beautiful. In fact, she was almost glowing with the excitement of it all. Harry knew she got nervous about going into the field, especially in situations such as this, but once she was there everything seemed to change. She slipped into character. She became this beautiful, sophisticated spy-woman who he completely could not understand but very much wanted to. "You seem to be getting along fine," he told her, motioning to the young man she had left behind, at the bar.

Ruth glanced back then turned back to Harry with a tiny smile.

"He is a bit much, really."

"No aspirations of becoming a politicians wife, then?" he asked, softly.

Ruth laughed.

"No, I don't think so."

"No dinners and charity balls?"

"Don't think it's my cup of tea."

"I don't know," Harry joked, lightly. "I think it suits you."

"Maybe you should run for office, then," Ruth joked back, eyes flashing playfully.

Nerves fluttered through Harry's stomach. Ruth had implied that she would marry him. Abstractly maybe, slightly like a joke definitely, but she had said it. And, though her cheeks flushed as she read his reaction, the playful flicker did not vanish from her eyes as Harry had expected it to. She had had a couple of glasses of champagne, he reasoned, watching her carefully. Maybe that was why. She was not drunk, by any stretch of the imagination, but her inhibitions seemed to be diminished somewhat because of it. Merry, playful Ruth, he thought with a smile. He had had little experience of this before, but it was nice. It was nice to see her happy for once.

They watched each other for a few seconds, then the moment passed quietly on, into another, and the pair of them simultaneously realised they were needed elsewhere. Gathering themselves and managing to sever eye contact, Harry and his analyst made their way along the corridor to one of the two 'meeting rooms' at the other end of the hotel from the main function suite. As they walked, they passed a couple of guests bickering at the base of the stairs, then another couple getting on much better in the lee of a doorway. Harry glanced back at Ruth to read her reaction on that but, as ever when on the job, her face was a facade of strict professionalism. His good spook, he thought, leading the way into the small meeting room.

Erin was seated at one end of a long table, when they entered, picking through a plate of what looked like olives, cheese and crackers. The plate was piled high.

"Hungry?" Harry asked, prompting the Section Chief to make an 'mmm' of agreement.

"Wood was snagged on the way out by the Secretary of State for International Development," she excused. "They're chatting water tables, but he'll be along in a minute."

Ruth moved past Harry and took a seat next to Erin, taking one of the crackers that Erin offered. Harry watched them both, declining a cracker, shuffling his feet, waiting. This was an entirely wasted venture, he thought, eyes dancing between the two women at the table, lingering longer on one than on the other. There was absolutely nothing to be gained by being here and talking to the Consul – other than reassuring the politician. And Harry wasn't really needed for that. Damn it, Ruth wasn't needed for it either. Erin could have managed fine on her own, or maybe with a junior officer in tow. Harry could have been home right now. He really wanted to go home. Really wanted bed. Really wanted a good-,

The door banged open, startling Harry suddenly from his foot shuffling. Consul Torrance Wood came breezing through, apologising profusely for his late arrival.

"I am so sorry," he exclaimed, seemingly completely sincere. "I understand you're very busy but he snagged me on the way out and I could hardly explain who I was coming to meet." His eyes darted between the three of them, hovering over Ruth and warming slightly in recognition. "Sorry for keeping you."

"Not a problem." Harry stepped forwards, extending a hand.

Torrance Wood was everything he had expected, from the photographs and details in his file. Of average height and slightly above average looks, he was the pleasant, inoffensive sort that you would imagine a middle-range politician to be. Pale enough to be recognisably British, he had floppy brown hair that was currently swept back and to one side – every bit the party poster boy, thought Harry, then cautioned himself about forming hasty first impressions. The man seemed genuine enough, in his movements. There were none of the tell-tale signs that he was holding back on them, or nervous about having a group of spooks poking around in his personal business. His shoulders were loose, muscles relaxed. The lines around his eyes and forehead spoke of stress, but Harry supposed that was only natural, given the situation. There were darker circles under his eyes. Probably not sleeping well, then, Harry thought, filing the information away.

They shook hands, testing the firmness of each other's grip, then Ruth and Erin moved forwards to introduce themselves in turn. Erin went first, in rank-order, and Wood's eyes did the momentary flicker over her – a natural response to a beautiful woman in a close-fitting dress – but he did not linger too long. Not unduly interested in the opposite sex, then, Harry noted. Not overtly interested, anyway. Their theory that the attempt on his life was personally motivated (and therefore, most likely, sexually motivated) was getting less likely the more they learned. According to his files and the surveillance footage of him, indeed, the man had no vices. He worked late but spent all of his spare time with his family. He indulged in the occasional social event, but never drank to excess or involved himself in the sort of company that attracted negative attention. He spoke sparingly to the media and it was all about work.

Nothing stood out in the file and nothing stood out in person. Amiable was the word Ruth had used to describe him and Harry agreed that it was a good one. Torrance Wood was softly spoken without being meek, confident without being arrogant, intelligent and mild mannered. His interest in aligning state interests and reducing the monopoly of large multi-nationals – and their influence over government – was controversial, in some circles, but not the mainstream and certainly not a point to kill a man over. Then again, Harry thought, men had been killed for less.

All in all, it was all a very confusing case. Harry hid his confusion, however, as he explained their progress to the Consul. Giving the cursory synopsis of their theories, the Section Head carefully explained what had happened at their meet with Juliet's contact and implied that they had several valid leads to follow, over the next few days. Allowing Wood an opportunity to ask questions, he answered patiently. In the moments he ran short of details on some front, like the names of Security staff assigned to his detail over the past year – which Harry was not sure anyone should be able to remember off the top of their head – Ruth or Erin stepped in. They knew the case inside out, especially Ruth, who had spent the best part of the last two weeks picking it apart and searching for patterns amongst its innards.

It was often the case that, because of her close involvement with the details of a case, Ruth would be the first of them to pick up the string that brought it all together. Her gut feeling on this case, however, which she had shared with Harry the other day, was that it was personal. Harry's gut feeling told him the opposite; that it was all about his work. The first attempt on his life had happened in the embassy, just days after discussing a new deal which he was brokering – a deal which would break the monopoly in the renewable energies industry in eastern China and would keep him in the country for the following year. The second attempt had happened when he had announced that he was going back, despite the first attempt. To Harry, the timing was inextricably linked to work.

Time would tell, he supposed, which of them was right. They had a different angle on what was happening and that was what made them so efficient as a team. It was good that they thought of things differently. It was good that they disagreed now and then. Sometimes, their biggest breaks came from their disagreements. Harry hoped there was a break in this case soon. There was only so much free champagne and small talk a spook could take before he shot someone.

"I can't thank you all enough for the work you are doing on this matter," Consul Torrance Wood was enthusing, as he teetered ever closer to the longed-for goodbye. Harry nodded, hanging on his words, wondering if Wood thought it really mattered, whether or not he was thankful, whether he realised the extent of what Harry would do, in the line of duty, for his country. Probably not. "I think my family are taking it all a little worse than me," the Consul pushed blithely onwards, smiling a little sheepishly. "I'm too busy to think about it but my wife is a nervous wreck over the whole situation and I don't think my son has emerged from his bedroom or from his games console in the last week. He won't talk to me about it, teenagers you know, but I know he must be scared."

Harry could only imagine what it was like to live with teenagers. He had been gone long before his children had reached that milestone.

"We will keep you updated on the situation," Harry answered, as patiently as he could muster. "My office will be in touch."

The slight implication in his tone permeated this time and Wood gave himself a little shake.

"Of course," he smiled, "I shall let you all go. Probably plenty to get on with."

Plenty. Harry fully intended to go home and get a reasonable night's sleep. And maybe some dinner, before that. And maybe Ruth.

"It's been good to put a face to a name," Wood leant forwards, taking Harry's hand and shaking it again. "Not that I suppose names and faces being linked are very important, in your profession," he added, lightly.

Erin and Ruth gave the requisite soft smiles. Harry just nodded and retracted back a pace.

Wood bid goodbye to Ruth personally before disappearing back out the door he had come, picking up his security detail on the way. Harry watched him go with a sense of relief. He had touched base. He had given the politician a nice comforting story to tuck under his pillow at night. Now, it was time to go and get some sleep himself so that he could spend the next few days chasing rogue operatives of a large multinational who may or may not be the ones to have paid Wood's would-be assassin. Turning to Ruth, Harry suggested they all leave separately so as not to arouse suspicion and Erin quickly volunteered herself to go first.

"I will be picking up another tray of snacks before I go. And some more of that champagne if there are any spare bottles lying around. Did you know," she asked, a frown darkening her delicate features. "That label retails at over thirty pounds a bottle. And they've been serving it all night!"

Harry wished he could be surprised by that fact.

"Charity fundraiser," he explained, with a stiff smile. "The fundraising will just about cover the spread, at the end of it."

"And we wonder why our foreign development schemes have slipped into negligence over the last ten years," Ruth commented wryly.

"Indeed."

Erin turned towards the door, saying that she would see them both at half ten tomorrow and thanking Harry for the lie-in.

Harry made sure to tell her that the late start was well-deserved and thanked her profusely for her willingness to be here, tonight, what with it being such a last-minute arrangement. It was important to him that his employees did not feel undervalued. It was hard, in their work, to give them recognition. So much was expected and so little could ever be talked about afterwards. Still, when there was a chance, he liked to take it. Giving his best wishes to her little daughter – who he felt a little sorry for depriving an evening with her mother, god knows she got so few – he bid her goodnight.

Once she was gone, he turned to Ruth.

"And what about you?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"Me?"

"Will you be lying in?" he asked. "I'd just like to know before I invited you back to my house," he explained, causing her eyes to flicker with light. "If you're one of those insufferable morning people then I won't bother."

A smile tugged her lips up at the corners.

Harry smiled back.

It was nice having little jokes between them. The truth of this one was that he _was_ one of those insufferable morning people. Ruth had called him it the other day, as they had struggled to get out the door for work – fighting to find the right clothing and enough time for them both to get in and out the shower. It was true, he supposed. He had always been at his most efficient in the mornings. He had assumed that most people were, to a greater or lesser degree, but Ruth had disproved that. While Harry fell asleep fast, slept like a log and woke to the buzz of his alarm almost instantly, his lover was the sort of person who required half an hour just to shift from a horizontal position to an upright and able-to-speak one. It took coffee and a surprising amount of coaxing. She must be better on her own, Harry mused. She had to be. Otherwise, she would never have made it into work on time, these last seven years.

Leaning back against the meeting room table, she shifted her foot inside her shoes, the gentle slope of her ankles on show for once.

"I will be in bed until bodily removed," she told him, eyes very fond and very warm.

For such an icy colour, she managed to instil a lot of heat, Harry thought, watching her across the room. Five feet away and he could almost feel it radiating from her gaze. Self-denial and self-control tickled at his impulses, after years of habit, but he pushed them aside gently as he walked towards her. A kiss on the cheek, for now, but the rules had changed, in this little game of theirs. Now, he did not have to hide. He was still being careful with her, not completely letting go, a little nervous about scaring her with the intensity he was feeling inside, but one day soon he would be able to show a little more. She was braver than she ever let on, his lady, and she was in this for him. God knew why, but she was.

.

They headed home in a taxi rather than waiting for Harry's driver to make the ten minute trip across from Thames House to collect them. Being half eleven on a Friday night, it took nearly an hour to escape the centre of the town and for the taxi to wind out into the more spacious residential districts. As the flashing lights of the clubs and the neon signs faded from Harry's mind, Ruth insisted paying for the taxi and they tripped out and up his garden path, slipping slightly on the frost which had gathered there. It was frigidly cold.

As Harry fumbled with the keys, he felt Ruth press against his side for warmth. Glancing down, he caught her eyes and she murmured for him to hurry up, breath escaping her mouth in tiny clouds of vapour. Things were getting easier, he thought, as he pushed through the last lock and then the door, disabling the first of his two alarm systems as he went. Things he had not even realised were difficult, when they started out, were growing easier now. They could argue about little things without worrying that the other would take it the wrong way, he thought, as Ruth followed him into the house and shut the door behind them. They could talk a little deeper and a little more honestly about things in their past. They could let each other in a little closer and stop worrying about the little details.

Details fled, for a moment, as Ruth stepped into his proximity and pressed her lips to the dip in his chin. Soft mouth so warm against his cold skin, she was all he needed to know. She was all he needed, at all, in fact. Just Ruth. Full stop.

They were getting good at this, he thought dimly, as her tongue brushed his and her fingers tugged at the lapels on his coat. They were getting used to accepting what they wanted, now. Now, he kissed her because it felt right to and because it made them both happy. They were getting better at being happy, he thought, as she walked him back against the wall of the hallway and slipped her hands around his sides. They were getting better at all of it – not that they had been half bad at some bits to start with.

Coats half off, they explored each other with increasing tension until Harry remembered that he had not deactivated the second of his two security systems. Realising that not doing so would probably result in a much higher police presence than would be entirely romantic, he mumbled so to Ruth and she drew back slightly. To his surprise, however, she did not step back from him. Instead, she just reached out and flipped the box open herself. Taking the key from where it was still grasped, in Harry's hand, she turned it in the lock, and keyed in the four digit code.

The four digit code he had never told her.

A little surprised, a lot turned on, he raised an eyebrow as Ruth leant back to him.

"I saw you enter it the other day," she explained.

"That was sneaky," he told her, in a half whisper.

The way they were standing, the half light of the hall threw shadows across her face. Her features were sharpened by it, her eyes seemingly larger and the pupils of them huge. They made Harry want to reach out and touch her. And self-control and self-denial had no place in her eyes. So he did.

.

They wandered through to the kitchen, half wrapped around each other, with every intention of making something to eat before they retired for the night. They only got as far as toast, however, before desire got the better of them and they drove each other back against the kitchen table, hips pressed against hips, arms wrapped around arms, lips meeting hungrily. Their bellies would survive until morning. There were other hungers that were more important, just now, and they would slake them first.

Burying his face in his lover's neck, Harry breathed her in as nimble fingers picked apart the knot of his tie. All the while, her lips brushed against his cheek as she whispered love to him. Harry loved it when she talked to him like this. It was a beautiful tone, she used, intensely intimate. Her words sounded as if it were coming from some secret place deep inside of her, a place which only he knew and, to Harry, it was bliss. Finally, after all of these years, he was allowed to revel in their connection. It had been there a long time, their strange understanding and mutual desire, but now he was finally allowed to act on it.

He kissed her neck, he stroked her back.

Here, in his kitchen, with her pressed against him, Harry felt happy and good and incredibly safe. It was an illogical feeling really, safety, because they were no safer together than they had been apart. Still, having her there made him feel better. With Ruth pressed against him, his greatest fears seemed instantly eliminated. She was alive and well and nothing else seemed to matter. Here, it felt like nothing could touch them. Here, they were just two lovers and their ghosts, with no rules to worry about – no boundaries, no one to judge them – just Harry and Ruth. Harry liked it when they were just that.

They were getting better at being just that, too. Backing up against the kitchen table, Ruth pulled him along, her movements a little bolder than they were at the beginning of the week. It would take time to learn each other fully, Harry knew, but they were making a good head start. Already, she had stopped looking to him for permission before every touch. Already, she was allowing her own wants to guide her movements and allowing herself to take more of a lead in their lovemaking. She was more confident than she gave herself credit for really, Harry thought, as she worked the shirt free of his waistband. More confident, more experienced, much less naive.

His shirt pulled free and she unbuttoned it easily, pushing it back to run her hands around the warm skin beneath. Finally granted skin contact, they slowed down for a moment, taking the time to kiss slowly. It only lasted a moment, however, before desire took over again and their movements became almost frenzied. Pressing back against the table, Ruth's fingers, no longer satisfied with his skin, fell to Harry's belt, easing the end free from the loop to the right of the buckle. Harry leant back, allowing her access, ignoring the little voice in his head which said this was probably not the most proper way to be behaving. Proper or not, it felt right.

Tugging the belt back through its buckle and free, Ruth discarded her task and leant back in to kiss him again, her mouth warm and wet and sweet. She tasted faintly of champagne. Her hands were very warm. Her belly was tilted forwards and, because she was a good few inches shorter, even in heels, it was level with his groin. Every little breath was lighting fire through him, every little movement making him harder and drawing him further away from sensible thought. Her hands were drawing him further, too, and her back was still pressed up against that kitchen table.

Oh, it would be so easy, Harry thought, watching her through lust-dazed eyes. So easy to slip his hands around her waist and shift her up on top of it. So easy to shift her dress up and pull close. So easy. They were both here and they both wanted each other and the table top was certainly sturdy enough. His fingers toyed with the edge of her hip and the top of her thigh, where he would lift her and settle her on top of the surface. All he needed was for her to wrap her hands around his neck and hold herself up. It would be so easy...

"Harry?" Ruth's soft voice caught his attention and he lifted his eyes hesitantly to meet hers.

She would read what he was thinking in his gaze, he thought, with a mixture of embarrassment and nerves. No matter how presumptuous it might be, he could not banish it from his eyes. Want was want and, right now, he was overflowing with it. His skin felt tight. His body tense.

Ruth just gave a tiny smile as he watched her, however, her eyes alight.

"We can," she told him softly, "if you'd like to."

_If_ he would like to?

Harry almost laughed out loud. There was no question, of whether or not he would like to. He would, he undoubtedly would. Indeed, he could not think of anything more singularly wonderful, in that moment, than sinking himself into her against his kitchen table. Still, he hesitated slightly. This could not fail to be amazing, for him. For Ruth, on the other hand... Well, Harry was not sure he could accomplish his end of the deal. He wasn't as young or fit as he had been, last time he did this, and he didn't feel nearly as invincible.

It was the same worry he had felt before their first few sexual encounter. After everything they had been through, he felt things needed to be perfect, between them. He wanted to give Ruth the sort of experience he had given lovers in the past but, predictably maybe, he could not get past the fact that he was not the same man as he had been, then. He was older. His body was weaker. His joints hurt a little, after long hard days and he was far too heavy to be graceful or suave any more. Time had finally caught up with him and, perhaps for the insolence of his running away, had pistol-whipped him about the head. Youth was over. Middle age was here and he could not turn back. He could not be the man he was then.

Fingers rising to stroke the lines of his face, however, Ruth did not look like she cared all that much. As she watched him, waiting for a response, her eyes were eager. Her body was curved towards him and, though her dress was cut conservatively at the neckline, the chest that was on view was rising and falling in time to rapid breaths.

"I want to," she told him, confidentially, as she stroked flat a few strands of hair. "I want you."

There was some sort of instinct which took over in moments like this. Doubts sort of fled when a woman had her arms wrapped around a man and she said those three words. It was all very well for him to want her, after all. She was beautiful and perfect and Ruth. He, on the other hand, was not much of a catch. He was too old for her, for one, never had been that good looking and hardly had any other attributes which made up for the lack of the first two. All in all, he was just Harry. Slightly shabby, slightly too fat, slightly scarred and broken Harry. But she wanted him. He might not be worthy of her, but she had chosen him. And some instinct, buried deep inside, told him that that was good enough.

They adjusted against each other, shifting back against the table, shifting Ruth up upon it. It took her weight easily. She was quite small really. When she kicked her heels off, her eyes barely drew level with Harry's chin. It made him feel even more protective of her than he already was. Leaning in to kiss her, he slid the silken dress up her legs, spreading his hands across the bared skin of her thighs. They were beautiful, warm and soft and infinitely tempting. Never one for resisting temptation, Harry was between them in an instant. As soon as he was, trousers were discarded down to his knees, boxers quickly following.

Pairing themselves together was a little difficult but, once they had, everything else ceased to matter. He was inside her and the heat and the pleasure of that fact surpassed any doubts or worries either might have had. They stilled, then wriggled a little closer, fingers grasping, breaths catching, their movements stifled by tiny half-swallowed moans. They struggled for a minute or so to find a cadence, fighting with overwhelming levels of desire. For Harry, it was a case of biting back soaring pre-climactic tension. Up his spine, down his limbs, tingling into his fingertips and toes, making his brain slightly dizzy; it held him in thrall for a few breaths, then he captured himself back and started to move against her gently. This was something he knew how to do. This was something he was good at.

Settling into a steady rhythm, he took her fast against the table top. So far, they had only ever approached sex in a cautious fashion, their movements soft and still a little bit restrained, but tonight was a different story. Tonight, he could sense that they both were in this for the release. Admitting that did nothing to diminish the act, however. It was slightly liberating, in fact, to see Ruth completely absorbed in the physical, for once. There was no pausing, here, to whisper sweet nothings. There was no long, drawn-out foreplay. Other days they would indulge in that, Harry knew. Other days they would be in the mood but, tonight, they just wanted the physical. And Ruth was enjoying everything that he could give her. Fully.

The expression in her eyes was nothing short of gleeful as their frenzied coupling paused so that he could turn her over. She giggled like a schoolgirl when he panted that she was going to be the death of him, into the back of her neck. Hands splayed across the kitchen table, she bore the fair share of the force of their movements. Watching the sinews of her back dance beneath her half-unzipped dress, Harry was suddenly privy to the strange revelation that his lover was a whole person. Not just an idea of a person, not just an ideal of love and devotion, but a living, breathing person. His lover had her own wants, her own thoughts and dreams. And she was not gentle and contemplative all the time. Sometimes, she was wild and as simply human as he was. Right now, for instance, she wanted to feel him every bit as he wanted to feel her. Underneath the little ways they had built up, during their complex lives, they were both ruled by the same instincts. And this instinct was as old as humanity itself.

Push. Pull. Pant. Rub. Grind. Gasp. Groan. Whimper her name, into the back of her neck, as her muscles began to shudder tight against him.

One hand wrapped around her belly, the other taking some of their weight on the table, Harry watched his lover hit her climax hard. His eyes found her face, watching her tremble and fight her conflicting needs as he moved evenly against her. Move faster, hold still, she wasn't sure and intensity of her internal struggle threw her forehead up into furrows. Harry just dazedly watched her, watching the sweat on her skin, watching her lips form the shadow of words. She was beautiful. She was so beautiful.

As she whispered his name and her muscles began to relax, he gave himself over to his own release. His eyes fluttered closed. He succumbed to the need to thrust faster and focussed in wards, concentrating on the rising pressure within his own body. Speeding up, he pushed himself to the brink and did not bother to dangle himself there. Tonight was all about simple gratification. Groaning her name, then, amongst a few other unintelligible words, he thrust again and let go.

He almost forgot who he was as he spilled himself inside of her. He almost forgot that there was a world, outside this half-lit room, with his half-clad lover pushing back against him. Everything was suddenly reduced down to simple sensation. He tasted sweat on his tongue, felt the silk of her dress pressed back against his belly, felt his body tighten and the heat of his release as she shifted around him.

Release. Liberation. Fulfilment.

She felt good. He felt so good.

The startling pleasure of it lasted a few seconds then overwhelming relief flooded in, in its place. Harry groaned as his muscles relaxed as one, causing him to rock forwards, against his lover. Thinking dimly that he did not want to crush her, he dropped both hands down to the table, to help support his weight. The muscles in his shoulders trembled a little, as he did so. It was not the only effect their coupling had had on his body. His breaths were quick and hard and shallow, for one. His skin was coated with a fine sheen of sweat, for another, and his heartbeat was astonishingly fast. He could hear it thundering in his ears, feel the pulse of his carotid arteries on either side of his neck. He quite fancied collapsing and sleeping for a year, but he could not help but grin just a little, at the thought of it all.

Him and Ruth. On a table.

His lover must have been having a similar internal reaction. As she propped herself up on her elbows, she arched her back, to slide him free from where they were joined, and shot him a mischievous grin over her shoulder.

"I've always wanted to do that," she admitted, eyes dragging over his face, taking in the aftermath of their actions. "Although, I'll admit, your desk featured a little more predominantly than your kitchen table in my imagination."

Harry made some noise of mild disbelief, privately thanking whatever God there was that she had saved that bit of information until after they were finished. He would not have lasted more than a minute if she had told him beforehand.

"I think I might have lost feeling in my toes," Ruth added, in a slightly contemplative sort of voice.

Immediately, Harry pulled back from her, apologising profusely, but Ruth just laughed softly and reassured him gently that that was not what she had meant. She was not crushed at all and not feeling her toes was, apparently, a good thing. She straightened up, however, and turned to face him as she smoothed her wrinkled dress back over her thighs. Harry watched her, not bothering to pull his own clothing back on. He had every intention of heading straight up to bed, once he had regained confidence that his legs could manage the stairs.

Tugging at the hem of her dress, Ruth winced slightly.

"Okay?" Harry asked, picking his discarded clothing up off the floor and laying it on the back of a chair.

She gave him a slightly bashful smile.

"Wet," she explained. "Gravity is working against me."

He could not help but laugh a little and, at the indignant flash in her eyes, a little more still. Closing the gap between them, he reached out and pulled her to him again, kissing her forehead, then her cheeks, then her lips as her hands rose up to wrap around his middle. They kissed softly, then Ruth pushed her head in against his chest and Harry fell to stroking the back of her hair. The strands lowest down, across the nape of her neck, were slightly sweat-dampened. He was a little sweat-dampened too, he thought, come to think of it. The house was kept warm, as he liked it, but they should probably both get themselves wrapped up warmly before they caught their death.

"Come on," he murmured, kissing the crown of her head one last time and inhaling the scent of her shampoo as he did so. "Upstairs."

"Mmm," she pulled back, frowning.

"What?"

"I think I was promised dinner if I came back with your, tonight?"

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Ruth, It's past one in the morning."

"I'm hungry," she stated, stubbornly.

"We had toast."

"I had a bite of toast, and then things got out of hand, and now the toast is cold and I'm still hungry."

Harry sighed.

"Well what would you like, then?"

"Nothing too complicated. Pasta or something."

Harry let a few seconds pass in incredulous silence.

"You want me to cook?"

A tiny smile crept across her lips.

"That is what I was promised earlier, yes."

"Now?"

"Yes."

"But... I'm completely naked."

She laughed loudly then gave his sides one last stroke, before pulling away altogether. Turning to the chair upon which he had set his discarded clothes, she selected his boxers off the top of the pile and tossed them lightly across to him.

"Here," she grinned, eyes flashing. "You can wear them, but nothing else, and you better be started by the time I get back from washing up. If you aren't," she warned, lifting a hand towards him, "you can foot the dry cleaning bill for this dress."

His eyes followed her as she left the room, barefoot in her half unzipped silk dress – a half unzipped silk dress that he would not like to have to foot the dry cleaning bill for, considering what he had rubbed across the back of it just minutes ago. That had been a little thoughtless of him, he mused, as he looked around the kitchen and considered what he had to offer her in ways of sustenance. He should make it up to her, really. It was a nice dress and it wouldn't be too much trouble. He already had all of the ingredients lying around. He had been going to cook her dinner anyway.

.

By the time she got back, he was boiling off a pot full of tagliatelle and halfway through making a sauce to go along with it, completely naked. (Why not go one step more than what she had requested, after all? His heating was on full blast and the kitchen looked over the back garden, with no neighbours to view them).

His lover laughed when she saw him, then made her way over to his side, pressing her face into the back of his shoulder.

"Everything is a challenge, to you, isn't it?" she asked, sounding more fond than reproachful.

"I like a challenge," he admitted, abandoning their dinner for a moment to turn and face her.

Standing before him, her eyes were huge and full of love. As he watched her, she reached out and slipped her hands around his middle, fingers curling against the soft flesh there. It felt still a little strange, but infinitely wonderful to be touched by her. It was the reassurance he so needed, that this was not just a dream and that she really was here, beside him, after all this time.

"Am I a challenge?" she asked, with such soft sincerity that he melted a little.

"You, my dear," he murmured, reaching down to brush her hair back, "are best thing that has ever happened to me." And a little bit of a challenge, he added, inside his head. But he would not have her any other way. "I love you, you know," he added, as a rather serious afterthought.

Ruth looked shyly down, never one to take an emotional admission in her stride, but held him closer nonetheless.

"You're only saying that because I'll do it on a table," she joked, in that soft, half grumbling way she had.

"Not only," he replied, playfully.

They laughed, for a while, then went back to their very late dinner; content, as always, just to be in one another's presence.

.


	19. Chapter 19

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_Chapter 19 - Jane _

.

Champagne had never agreed with Ruth. Pleasant as it was at the time, it always left her with a bit of a headache, the morning after. As she shuffled into Harry's kitchen at eight o' clock the next morning, then, she did so very tenderly.

She was alone in the house, Harry having popped out to buy milk at half past seven. He, of course, found her tender condition much more amusing than she did. Leaning back against the kitchen counter, Ruth gave a wide yawn and focussed her bleary eyes on the clock. It was well past when she was normally up, but with the day being so dark and rainy outside the window and the kitchen being so warm, she was sorely tempted to sneak back upstairs and crawl into bed again. Unfortunately, it was harder to pull a sickie when your boss could see, first hand, that she was hardly on death's door. No, she gave a yawn, she would not go back to bed. They had to be in by half ten anyway and, before that, she still had a shower and get dressed.

Closing her eyes, she buried her nose into the shoulder of Harry's dressing gown, which smelt so delightfully of him that the compulsion to shower and dress faded slightly. She would just stand here for a while, she decided, leaning back against the kitchen counter. She would just drink in the quiet of his kitchen and the patter of rain against the windows until Harry returned.

As she did so, her thoughts returned to the previous night.

Resultant mild hangover aside, it had been a good one. The operation had gone without a hitch and, as if to reward themselves for such success, she and Harry had returned to his house to have a completely satisfying and fantasy-fulfilling shag against the kitchen table. It had been wonderful, really, thought Ruth, her eyes drifting over the very spot where he had pressed her the previous night. It had been the first time, really, where he had not held back from his want, or treated her as if she were made of glass and – much as she liked the tender way he touched her – it was nice to have assurance that their coupling brought pleasure for him too.

A little smile tickled her lips, at that thought. She had not needed any assurance last night, though. His breathless groans, into her back, were proof enough of how much he had enjoyed them. It was definitely worth the ruining of her dress, Ruth decided, smiling as she remembered her lover's face. He made her feel alive. He made her feel happy and as if she completely belonged – which was something that she had been searching for, ever since she was a teenager. Somewhere to belong, someone to belong with. He was good lover. And a sweet one, she thought, feeling momentarily guilty again for letting him go out to fetch milk in this rainy weather.

Normally, if he had offered to make the run, she would have told him not to be silly and that she could manage fine without. This morning, however, she had been so half-asleep and so utterly incapable of functioning without caffeine that her manners had slipped. Wrapped up in her duvet and unable to see what weather she was sending him out in – and not thinking to ask him how far the nearest shop was – she had just nodded and mumbled yes. And, smiling a little fondly, Harry had kissed her forehead and quietly padded off. He was very good to her, thought Ruth, feeling her head throb just a little. Perhaps his being a morning person would work out well, after all.

.

The house remained silent for a good ten minutes before Ruth heard movements at the front door. Assuming them to be of the returning Harry, she wrapped his dressing gown a little more tightly around her body and padded through to the hall to thank him. When she got there, however, she was startled to find a much less familiar (but instantly recognisable) face appearing in the opened doorframe.

Tall, willowy Jane Townsend stood at the end of the hall, trying to manoeuvre two bags in the front door alongside her. Though they had never met in person, Ruth recognised Harry's ex-wife immediately from her extensive stalking of her boss. She had read Harry's file from front to back, several times, and that included the file addendum about his family. Jane had her own vetting certificate and background information, which Ruth had read too – (curious, of course, about a woman who, once upon a time, Harry Pearce had deemed worth enough to give his name). Though the photographs in the file had been taken fifteen years ago, Jane was still very recognisable. What she was doing in Harry's house, however, was completely beyond Ruth.

Hovering in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, Ruth watched her disarm both of the security systems before setting her keys down on the hallway table. Realising that Harry's ex- had not yet seen her, the analyst briefly considered slinking back out of sight again, but the blonde suddenly looked up and the plan to hide was rendered moot.

"Oh!" Jane Townsend gave a start, causing Ruth to startle slightly as well. Surprise flitted across her face, chased by anxiety and then embarrassment. She had not been expecting anyone to be in any more than Ruth had expected anyone to come visiting, then. "Sorry," she winced, looking about herself. "I didn't know anyone was home. Harry's usually out by this time. You must be... um..." Jane stopped short, then, blushing slightly.

Ruth could fully understand her confusion. What did one call the person who was sleeping with your ex-husband? Girlfriend, partner, lover, skank? Her stomach, already queasy, had suddenly given a turn for the worse. Remembering she was hung-over and dressed in nothing more than a pair of pyjama bottoms, a vest top and one of Harry's bathrobes, did nothing to help matters. Valiantly trying not to blush and make herself look more of an idiot than she already did, Ruth attempted to speak in response.

"He's just popped out for milk, actually... has the morning off."

"I see..."

She and Jane stared at each other for a moment.

The irony of the situation, thought Ruth, was that she had been planning what she would say, if she was ever to meet Harry's ex, just the other day. In her mind, of course, it had all been done with a great deal more dignity than she was managing now. She had been fully dressed, for starters, and she hadn't been hungover and bleary, with last night's makeup still marking out her eyes. Bollocks, Ruth thought, under her breath. This was certainly not the way she had wanted things to pan out.

Jane didn't look like she was enjoying herself either. Shifting from one foot to another, she cleared her throat and continued, uncomfortably.

"I would have knocked, if I'd have thought anyone was home, but Harry's car was gone and I have a key." She swallowed, then licked her lips, then babbled on. "I was just in the neighbourhood and thought I'd drop by take some of those boxes off his hands. Oh," she paused, giving herself a little shake as she realised she had not yet introduced herself. "I'm Jane, by the way, uh..." she gave a bashful smile, "...Harry's ex-wife."

"I know," Ruth admitted, quietly.

Jane really had not changed all that much from the MI5 surveillance photographs. Though markedly older than Ruth, she was still a very beautiful woman, with high cheekbones and large expressive eyes. She looked about a height with Harry, maybe a shade shorter, but carried herself like someone much taller than she was – or, at least, she had been carrying herself tall until about five seconds ago, when Ruth admitted she knew who she was. Now, Jane was clearly unsure if they had met before. Hovering in the doorway, she watched Ruth a little warily.

Deciding if she didn't say something soon, they might both die of embarrassment, Ruth forced her lips to part again.

"I've worked with Harry for a while, so I've seen your file," she explained, wishing that an explanation of how she knew who Jane was didn't have to disclose that she had obsessively stalked Jane's ex-husband for the past seven years, or so. "I mean," she corrected, "during the course of our time working together, I've seen his file and yours by proxy. That's how I know you – we haven't met, or anything. I just recognised you from the photograph."

"Oh... right."

Jane nodded and looked around herself, nervously, clearly hoping the ground would swallow her up and spare her from having to complete this conversation. As she looked around, her eyes fell to the identification cards and discarded bits of MI5 cover material which Ruth had laid on the hall counter the previous night.

"You must be Rachael Hunter, then?" she asked.

Ruth almost winced. That she was using an alias somehow made this situation even more awkward.

Unable to explain the truth, she just nodded.

"And you work at the Home Office," Jane read, sounding mildly surprised – perhaps that her ex-husband would have shacked up with a politician.

"PR," Ruth explained, clutching Harry's dressing gown a little tighter around her.

A few very long seconds passed, then Harry's ex-wife started to speak quickly again.

"Listen, I'm sorry again for barging in. I left a message last night, to say that I'd be popping by to pick up some things and I assumed Harry would be out – he's usually at work by this time on a weekday." Her cheeks coloured, slightly, as she realised that the reason he was not at work, this early on a weekday, was standing on front of her. Another few long and fraught seconds passed, then she exhaled heavily and voiced what both of them were thinking. "This is quite awkward..."

Due, perhaps, to the unexpected honesty of her statement, the tension was suddenly broken in the room. Ruth gave a short laugh, looking down at her feet.

"Well, I'm sure you're very welcome to come in," she told Jane, who gave a slightly nervous laugh in reply and nodded.

"Thank you," she tried a smile. "I won't keep you long. I just need to pop upstairs to the attic room."

There was a strange moment where Ruth thought of asking whether Jane might like a hand, looking for her box, before she realised that Jane had lived in this house for longer than Harry had – and Ruth didn't even really know where anything was anyway.

The moment passed with a strange sad twist in her stomach. At the same time, her brain had started to move on from the shock of Jane's arrival and onto the topic of why exactly Harry thought it was acceptable for his ex-wife to have a key to his house – and to come and go from it as she please. As unfailing polite as Jane was, as Ruth invited her in and told her Harry would be back any minute, the situation was admittedly very weird. This didn't happen to people who didn't date Harry Pearce, she thought, just a little sourly. Normal people didn't get their partners into this sort of mess.

"Do you need any help carrying anything out?" she asked her new lover's ex-wife.

Jane shook her head.

"No, I'll manage. It's just a box of baby photos and suchlike. My daughter's getting married and she wants them for some game at the wedding," she explained.

"Catherine," Ruth nodded, eager to show that she knew about Harry's family and his life, outside work. The last thing she wanted Jane to surmise was that she was like Juliet. She decided not to say, however, that she had learned of Catherine through an MI5 operation. She got the impression that Jane might not have learned about that particular incident. "I heard she's staying in Turkey, at the moment. Is that right?" she asked, instead.

"Yes," Jane sighed, as if her daughter's current choice of home was a source of some vexation. "Well, she's filming a project in Bulgaria right now, actually, but she will be heading back to Turkey with her fiancée, in about a month or so. The wedding is supposed to be in March, barring any setbacks."

"Turkey is a beautiful country," Ruth commented, seizing on something she could readily talk about. She knew plenty about Turkey – from work as well as from living not so very far away, in Cyprus. George had had family in Adana and they had visited twice, while she had lived with him. "Where is Catherine's fiancée from?"

"Antalya." Jane mispronounced the name, slightly – leaving Ruth a little comforted to know that her predecessor was not, in fact, completely perfect.

"Oh, it's lovely out that way," she enthused.

"I've not had the chance to go, yet. I suppose I'll see it at the wedding, though."

"Yes, of course."

Ruth cleared her throat and wrapped her arms around herself, within the dressing gown, trying desperately not to think about the fact that she and Harry had been curled naked against each other less than an hour ago – or about what they had done on the table, next door. Somehow, though Jane was no longer his wife, it felt wrong.

Jane gave her a warm smile, clearly none the wiser to her thoughts.

Eventually, she motioned towards the staircase and said she would go and fetch the box if that was okay and Ruth nodded, voicing repeatedly that that was very okay and that she would be in the kitchen if Jane needed any help at all lifting things down. They parted a little faster than two people normally would, Ruth pulling a face to herself once she had reached refuge behind the kitchen door. Why did these things always happen to her, she asked herself, as she walked over stuck the kettle on, out of habit. Why was it always her who ended up in strange, awkward social situations? She was ill equipped to cope with them so why did the world continue to throw them her way? And who gave their ex-wife keys to their house? she added, inside her head. In fact, who stored their ex-wife's belongings because her new love-nest wasn't big enough to fit them in? He was a ridiculous excuse for a human being.

.

Ridiculous excuse, of course, became an understatement as he did not return within the next five or ten minutes, leaving Ruth alone with Jane as she returned from the attic with her box of photos.

Upon entering the kitchen, Harry's ex- set the box on the counter and, much to Ruth's terror, took up a seat at the counter as if she intended to stay.

"You don't mind if I hang around until Harry gets back, do you?" she asked, politely as ever but – in Ruth's opinion – in a little bit of rhetorical manner. "I have something important to relay to him, about Graham, and I think it would be better if it hears it in person."

"Of course," Ruth agreed readily. She was vastly out of her depth, in this whole relationship business, but this part she knew. The new lover was hated for coming in between the children and dad. And Ruth was not going to be that person. Telling Jane that she was very welcome to stay, then, Ruth did what all good Brits did when desperate times struck. She made tea.

By the time the kettle boiled, Ruth had remembered the reason why she had not already made tea, this morning – and the reason Harry was missing in the first place. The lack of fresh milk, however, was a problem that Jane was able to rectify. Responding in good humour to Ruth's apologies, she suggested that they look at the back of the cupboard above the cooker, explaining that she had left some powdered milk there when she moved out and doubted that Harry would have had the time or inclination to do a clear out since.

Sure enough, they found a large tin of powdered milk.

"There you go," Jane had exclaimed, pleased with herself, and Ruth had just smiled, tightly, trying not to let the beautiful intruder into her morning know how unnerved she was, by her in-depth knowledge of Harry's little ways.

She knew, of course, that she shouldn't be surprised by Jane knowing Harry. After all, they had known each other since University. They had grown up together and been married for years. Whether or not their marriage had been a happy one, they had still learned a lot about one another. They had raised a family here, in this house, thought Ruth. Really, she was the outsider.

They sipped their tea, for a while, and waited for Harry, Jane gently leading the conversation along – asking how Ruth and Harry had met and looking reassured when she found out it was more than ten years after the divorce. Ruth did her best to answer the questioning in an indirect way, without referring to the work that they did. All the while, of course, she was careful to respond to Rachael Hunter as if it were really her name. One of these days, she told herself with a sigh, it was going to come back and bite her in the ass.

As five minutes passed and Harry continued to remain elusive, they moved on to talk of Catherine and the wedding. Ruth told Jane about how she had used to live in Cyprus – leaving out the details of when and why she had lived there, of course, and the events leading up to it. Jane was pleasant conversation and, despite being a little intimidated, Ruth was starting to relax as they reached the bottom of their cups of tea. Harry's ex- was really nothing like what she had imagined. From the photographs and from the few times Harry had mentioned her, Ruth had always pictured Jane as haughty and aloof. To be perfectly honest, in fact, she had pictured her more like Juliet Shaw and less like the friendly and gentle woman on front of her.

It was possible, of course, that her previous perception had been biased, Ruth thought, as Jane began to chat about Oxford, (where she had attended the same college and course that Ruth herself had done, just a little more than a decade later). Perhaps Jane was a much nicer person than Harry had let on. Or perhaps, Ruth thought, she was just playing nice while she waited for an opportunity to jump across the counter and stab her through the heart with one of the nearby kitchen knives for being a dirty rotten skank who had screwed the father of her children, on her kitchen table. Anything was possible, thought the nervous analyst, pressing her bare toes against the cold tiled floor.

.

Harry returned not long after they finished their tea, having spent nearly forty minutes 'popping out' for milk. Ruth full intended to frown at him, for taking so long, but when he entered she was just so glad to see him that it turned into a smile. Harry, on the other hand, stopped in his tracks, eyes widening slightly as he took in the scene; his lover sitting, having tea with his ex-wife, photo album open to a page full of baby Catherine. As he stood, frozen in the doorway, grocery bag in hand, Jane turned in her chair and shot him a smile.

"Harry!"

"Jane..." Harry stated, with the air of someone staring at his doom. "What the Hell you doing here?"

"Picking up some photos," Jane explained, tapping the album then turning back to Ruth. "He's a charmer, you know. You have yet to experience the depths of it," she informed her.

"Jane," Harry muttered her name again, almost threateningly this time.

"Oh, all right." Standing up, Jane closed the photo album, but not before slipping one out of its pocket and sliding it across the table, to Ruth. "You should keep that," she told her, quietly. "Make copies."

Harry's eyes darted between the two of them and Ruth could honestly say that she had never seen him look so terrified.

Ruth smiled and took the photograph, sliding it into the pocket of the dressing gown.

"Lovely meeting you," she told Jane.

"And you."

Standing up, Harry's ex wife gathered her box and her handbags and walked over to Harry.

"Okay," Ruth heard her hiss, as Harry put his hand on her back and steered her out of the room. "I'm bloody coming!"

Ruth watched them go, wincing slightly. She did not fancy being Jane, right at this moment in time. Harry looked very tense and when Harry _looked_ tense then it did not bode well for what was going on inside his head. As they disappeared into the corridor, Ruth heard them begin to bicker, viciously. She stayed seated at the counter, drinking her tea, for a minute or two but then curiosity got the better of her. Standing up, she sidled a little closer to the door. Leaning nonchalantly against the kitchen table as she strained hear what her boss and his ex- were saying.

"I don't understand what you're getting so worked up about!" Jane's voice was dimly visible through the thick wood. "Myself and Rachael were having a perfectly civil conversation."

Ruth could hear Harry pause, minutely, as he registered the fact that Ruth had used her alias. He glossed over it well, however, from what she could hear.

"She doesn't know you well enough to know when you're taking the piss, Jane," he snapped back at his ex-, "but I do."

"I wasn't taking the piss."

"You were drinking tea with her!"

"I was being civil because I think she is nice. I like her. Is that so hard to believe?"

"You don't like her, Jane, you like the idea of getting to me."

"Don't be an ass, Harry."

"Oh, _I'm_ being an ass?"

"Yes. Yes you are."

"You're the one turning up uninvited, nosing into my life."

"Keep your shirt on! I called first. It's not my fault you don't check your goddamned messages." There was silence for a few moments then Jane's tone lowered, softening slightly. "She's lovely, you know, Harry – far too young for you, of course, but lovely. A damned sight prettier than the last one, too," Jane added, making Ruth feel slightly uncomfortable – not only that Harry had had other lovers (which, of course, she knew) but that his ex-wife knew about them. "Whatever happened to her, by the way?" Jane continued, her tone returning to the teasing lilt it had had earlier. "I know it was just over a year ago, now, and you move fast, but you two seemed so suited to one another."

Something inside Ruth dropped away a little.

A year ago. Harry had been sleeping with another woman only a year ago. Part of her reared up in defiance, said that he wasn't hers then, that she had no right to be annoyed, but that part was not quickly overcome by another – a part which was whispering that he had asked her to marry him just over a year ago. Around the same time Jane had seen him with another woman, Harry had stood by her side and asked her to be his wife. Ruth felt her fingers tighten, automatically, against the kitchen table. Could he really have been sleeping with someone?

Sick, vivid waves of jealousy ran through her – accompanied by a healthy dose of hurt. He wouldn't have, would he? Harry loved her. He loved her. He had loved her for years.

"God Jane," Ruth heard Harry sigh, from next door. "There are no words to describe how much this is not your business..."

He _had_ been sleeping with someone else.

Ruth's head reeled at the revelation. She knew things between them had been very tense, last year, around the time she had turned down his marriage proposal, but would he really have gone to seek solace in another woman's bed? No, worse than that, Ruth reminded herself, he had brought the woman home with him. If Jane had met her, then it would have been another situation like this – except in his old house, of course. Perhaps that was why she had taken this morning so well, Ruth thought, feeling queasy. Perhaps she was fairly used to going to talk to Harry and finding half-clad women in his kitchen.

Outside, in the hall, she heard Harry and Jane continue to argue loudly again for another minute – the only audible words 'Graham', 'responsibility' and 'vainglorious bastard' – then footsteps and the slamming of a door. Jane was gone.

Realising that her eavesdropping would be all too obvious if she was lurking near the kitchen door, Ruth turned on her heel and rushed back over towards the kitchen counter. Seizing the two empty tea cups, she emptied the bags out into the sink and began to clean vigorously, anything for a distraction from the inevitable confrontation with Harry. A couple of seconds passed in silence then more footsteps sounded in the hall, heading towards her this time. Harry pushed his way back in, heaving a heavy sigh. Ruth heard him walk over to the kitchen table and set the bag down, then the clink of his keys. Preparing a face which she hoped to God looked nonchalant, she turned and smiled at him.

Harry smiled back, looking mildly anxious.

"Hello," he said, softly. "I'm so sorry about that. I had no idea she was coming over, today, or I would have warned you."

"It's fine," Ruth breezed over, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, because Harry's forehead creased slightly in response. "No harm done."

Her heart felt like it was twice the size, inside her chest. Her lungs felt as if they were glued together. She couldn't breathe, was sure her brain was singing out, from lack of oxygen. She wanted to ask, needed to ask, couldn't ask. Who had she been? Had he lain beside her like he lay beside Ruth in her bed? Were they lovers, or just people who met up for a casual fuck? What happened to the other woman? How long had he stayed with her? Did it matter, Ruth wondered?

Of course it mattered. It was Harry. How could it not matter?

Harry continued to watch her, now looking more than mildly anxious. "Feeling better?" he asked, cautiously.

"Oh, yes, very much." Ruth cleared her throat and then pushed quickly on with conversation, hoping to gloss over the nerves that Harry read in her eyes. "Did you get milk?"

"Yes. Had to wait fifteen minutes for the shop to open," he nodded, stepping forwards. "I found some strawberries, too, which is surprising, for this time of year." For a brief moment, he looked as if he were going to push on with the conversation. After a few seconds, however, he frowned again and asked her "Ruth, are you okay?"

"Fine," she blustered, forcing on another smile.

It was a bit of a pointless procedure, of course, lying to Harry Pearce. He could read her like an open book, Ruth thought, her heart thudding faster. He had known her for nearly eight years. They had seen each other through ever sort of emotion possible; fear, happiness, anxiety, longing, pleasure, self-restraint and self denial. He knew every nuance of her face, the way it shifted and changed with her passing expressions. He knew what she looked like, nervous and worried, and he was not an idiot. He knew this was something to do with Jane.

"You're not fine," he pointed out, softly.

It was a statement rather than a question.

Setting down the box of strawberries and pulling off his gloves, Ruth's lover walked swiftly across the kitchen and right up to her, coming to a halt a foot or so away. Ruth, who had never been much good at confrontation with anyone – let alone Harry – tried valiantly to look him in the eye. She failed, of course, but somehow managed not to blush or blurt out anything particularly embarrassing as she did so. In fact, Ruth thought, she did rather a good job of holding her own. That was, until Harry opened his mouth. Then she fell to pieces.

"Ruth, what's wrong?" he asked her, softy, reaching up a hand to brush against her waist.

His skin was warm, from being tucked inside his leather gloves. His fingers were strong, through the fabric of the dressing gown. Had he touched his other lover like he touched her, now? She hadn't been with him, then, Ruth reminded herself. It didn't matter who she was or what they did. She had Harry now. But she had to ask.

"I was eavesdropping, on you and Jane," she admitted, quietly.

Harry feigned surprise, with raised eyebrows. "Spy!"

If she had been any less tense, Ruth knew she would have laughed. As it was, however, she only managed a twitch of a smile before looking down. Her stomach felt like it was lined with lead and she was still having trouble breathing over the speed of her heart rate. Harry with another woman – Harry with someone other than her – just a year ago.

"I heard you talking about me," she told Harry.

Harry's face slid back into a neutral expression, eyes calm and very slightly fond.

"Yes."

"And some things that Jane said."

"Don't worry about what Jane said," Harry reassured her. "She was trying to get at me – none of it was personal. After all," he mentioned, lightly, "she doesn't even know who you are... Rachael."

Ruth decided to ignore the little dig.

Harry sighed.

"What's bothering you?"

"I heard her say..." Ruth drifted off, not sure how to put this.

"Yes?"

She stalled, for a second. How did one air their paranoia about their new lover's past conquests? How was this possibly done without looking like the world's greatest fool? Realising she probably wasn't going to be able to not look like an idiot, Ruth's mouth decided just to let rip before her brain was fully in gear to process the embarrassment.

"Well, I just heard her talking to you, about some other woman," she stammered, "and I know its stupid, but I was just wondering – and you don't have to say anything because I know we weren't... weren't anything at the time and even for a long time after, actually – but I was just wondering, if you wouldn't mind telling me... who she was?"

She finished with a swallow, still not sure if she really was finished, but damned if she could think of anything else to add.

She had said it. She had revealed what a jealous shallow person she could be

...And Harry was smiling.

Ruth frowned. It wasn't the reaction she had expected and, therefore, it did nothing to assure her at all. In fact, her stomach twisted a little further.

"Harry?" she murmured, nervous as she had ever been, except, perhaps, that night on the rooftop, as he had stood opposite her and asked to kiss her. "Will you please say something because I feel very stupid and incredibly paranoid, right now."

Perhaps sensing the desperation in her voice, Harry relented.

"It was nothing, Ruth," he told her, softly. "Jane completely misunderstood the situation."

There was a moment where Ruth thought, quite acutely, that she did not believe that was entirely true. Then, realising what she had thought and starting to blush with the shame of distrusting him, especially at such an early stage of their relationship, she turned quickly away towards the sink. This was an out. She could just accept what Harry had told her and move on with the conversation. After all, his having sex with some other woman had hardly been a slight to her. They had not been anything, at the time. At the time, just over a year ago, she had refused his proposal and they had just been colleagues who barely talked to one another. They had not been anything.

"Okay," she told Harry, lowering her hands back to the sink again, running the tea cups under the stream of water. Its spray was warm and repetitive and oddly soothing, though her heart rate continued to soar. Harry was standing just a foot or so behind her, not saying anything.

Eventually, the silence was broken with his soft footstep on the tiles and Ruth felt him draw close to her, brushing a hand across the small of her back.

"Ruth..." he whispered her name against the back of her neck, not close enough to touch but close enough to feel him. It was the warm way he did it which could melt her like butter. She wanted to melt, now, but she couldn't. Just couldn't. "Do you remember when Jack Colville went on his revenge spree?" he asked her, softly, still just inches away from her neck. "The assassination of all those involved in death of his asset lover's life?"

Ruth nodded, not turning to face him, dreading whatever story he was about to tell her because it would lead to how he met this mystery woman and, as much as she needed to know, she didn't want to hear this. Harry was a cautious man, by nature and profession, so whatever he had shared with this woman could not have been something completely superficial. He had let her into his house, so he had wanted more than a casual screw. And this had all taken place not a few months before he had asked her to marry him. Ruth swallowed hard. She knew people met and fell in love and became engaged in less time, but it seemed a quick turnover – even for a man who Jane had said 'moved fast' between lovers.

Harry pressed his fingers a little more firmly against her back.

"Do you remember?

"I do," she murmured, half-heartedly.

"Ros put her name down, as the signing officer, on request form allowing the exchange of the Baranova girl in return for her brother's testimony."

"I remember," Ruth told Harry, feeling a little sick. She regretted ever having brought this up. The past was in the past and she didn't care – only she did, because it was Harry. "We were chasing Sarah Caulfield at the time," she managed to mutter, almost choking on the nerves in her words. "Ros used herself as bait to lure Colville into our range because she thought she could talk him down. He slipped the trap but ended up shooting himself."

"Yes. And Ros compromised her house," Harry told her, quietly.

A moment passed.

Ruth stood stock still. Then, eventually, a huge wave of relief swept through her and she turned quickly around on her heel, looking to Harry to confirm what she thought she understood.

"So Ros was...?"

"...staying with me," Harry nodded, "for two weeks, until her new lease started."

"Oh..." Ruth felt a swelling sense of joy, quickly chased by a swelling sense of mortification.

"She was going to stay in a hotel but I was repainting the downstairs of my house, at the time, and I offered her a free room in exchange for a hand."

"Right," Ruth swallowed.

Now she felt truly idiotic. Harry had not been sleeping with someone else. The woman she had been so worried about Ros. He had been letting her stay, as a favour. Ros. It made sense, really. During the years Ruth had spent away from MI5, Ros and Harry had reached a strange, almost sibling-like relationship. The verbal sparring, the easy way of being around one another, coupled with the fact that Ros had been found in Harry's house early in the morning, could easily lead to a misunderstanding. And, of course, Jane would not have taken Harry's word on the matter, when he said that they were not involved. Harry's ex- had a wealth of experience of finding him with women – none of whom, Ruth assumed, he had simply been offering a bed for the night.

Standing a few feet apart, Ruth stared at her lover, caught between speechless and cripplingly embarrassed. Her cheeks were hot and the skin at the nape of her neck was prickling. Harry was watching her with a strangely mixed expression. There was fondness there and a little relief, but something else too.

"You were-," he began very slowly, but Ruth interrupted, suffering from a crisis of confidence.

"-I'm sorry," she cringed. "I shouldn't have said anything. I shouldn't even have been listening. It was stupid and, even if you had been with someone then, it wouldn't matter. I was just-,"

"Jealous," Harry said, softly.

A moment passed, seeming to take an inordinately long time.

Harry watched her, looking mildly triumphant now.

Ruth swallowed, hard.

"Oh, shut up," she eventually muttered, turning away.

Behind her, Harry gave a tiny chuckle – that slightly dark noise that he could make, when he was both amused and pleased with himself.

What he was pleased with, Ruth could not be sure. That he was vindicated, perhaps? Or that she was a ridiculous, jealous, possessive idiot who could not stand the idea of anyone else touching him? She could not understand how that second point could be something to be pleased over. It made her look like an idiot and he a little silly, for aligning himself with her. Stepping closer, however, her lover showed no sign of displeasure over any of it. Dipping in, he placed a kiss against the back of her neck, wrapping his hand around her waist. His hand was warm and strong. Ruth tried to squirm away but he pressed softly into her, trapping her against the sink in a manner he wouldn't have dared to, just a few days ago.

They were growing into one another, Ruth thought, feeling a little rush of pleasure run through her.

"What did Jane want?" she asked, hoping it would drive the conversation on, from herself.

"My soul, on a platter."

"And in reality?" Ruth asked, leaning back against him as he leant forwards into her.

Harry groaned, sliding his hands down her forearms and up again, his body a mirror of her own as he stood behind her. Belly to back, shoulders to chest; they fit so well, thought Ruth. They stood for a while longer. Then, she turned her head and watched him, out of the corner of her eye.

"Harry?"

"Graham," he answered, a little hesitantly. "She says he wants to meet up with me, to discuss something."

Ruth's eyebrows rose, slightly.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" she asked, not quite understanding Harry's unhappiness over the matter. They had not really talked about his children, but she knew that Harry had not seen his son for a very long time. Surely contact was a good thing?

Harry turned his face into hers, their foreheads inches away. They were close enough that Ruth could see every fleck of colour in his eyes and every one of the fair lashes that surrounded them. They were rather beautiful. At the moment, however, they were slightly hidden beneath a frown.

"I've not spoken to him since he was..." Harry drifted off then winced, "seventeen."

That was truly awful, thought Ruth, but did not say it aloud. Harry knew exactly what state his relationship with his son was in. He did not need her to tell him. Instead, she just shifted against his weight, feeling the soft pressure of his chest against her shoulder blade.

As nicely as they fit together, she thought, there would always be parts of him that she could not understand. If she had a child, she could not imagine there ever being circumstances under which she would go almost ten years without speaking to them. She had scant experience of parenting, however. She had spent only a little more than a year with George and his son, Nico. They had been becoming closer, just before they had been ripped apart, but the child was never really her son. It was not a case of blood, more one of not being able to imagine ever having a child with Nico's father. Ruth had cared about George deeply, she had felt safe and happy with him, but some small part of her had kept calling out that this was not her home and that George was not who she belonged with. Harry was different. Five or six years ago, Ruth had spent whole (very unproductive) days dreaming about bearing his children – and all the bits that led up to it.

As he stroked up and down her arms, Ruth let out a little sigh, at the thought. Much as the romantic in her liked to fantasise, the analyst knew that they would have made terrible parents. They were both far too absorbed in their work. It had taken leaving to realise how absolutely ludicrous the hours were. Harry, in particular, had not time for a private life. In fact, Ruth suspected she had spent more time with Nico, during their one year, than Harry had spent with Graham in his entire life. It was the reality of being a spook, she supposed. Adam Carter had felt the pressure, with Wes, Erin Watts felt it now, but none of them had been so utterly destroyed by it as Harry. Then again, none of them had been so single-minded. Harry did not do things by halves, she thought, leaning her head back against him.

He kissed her hair, softly.

"Are you going to meet him then?" she asked.

Harry nodded, his face brushing against her.

"When?"

"This Monday, at a restaurant in SoHo," he wrinkled his nose. "I should have about twenty years on the combined age of the whole room."

He sounded a little uneasy about the whole situation, so Ruth tried to lighten the mood a little.

"Well, you are phenomenally ancient," she pointed out.

She felt Harry smile, felt him press a little harder against her back.

"Honestly," Ruth continued, as Harry wrapped his arms around her middle, "you're older than anyone I've ever met."

A chuckle.

"On your last legs, really."

"And yet," he whispered, against her neck, "you find it in yourself to get jealous, over my decrepit old self?"

Ruth felt her cheeks heat again.

"I wouldn't have called it jealousy, as such..." She cleared her throat. "It was just interest."

"Hmm."

They stood, admiring the view of the garden from his back window, drinking in the sight of the winter rain.

.


	20. Chapter 20

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_Chapter 20 – Old Acquaintances_

.

By the time they headed into work, the earlier morning's rain had become a sleet shower. It had been, in Harry's opinion, the wettest January that Harry had experienced, at least in the last thirty years. Since the New Year, it had been raining more or less constantly, only a few days being cold enough to actually yield snow. Never being much of a romantic about winter, Harry would not have expected to miss the snow so much. But when the alternative was sleet...

Harry shook himself slightly as he slipped into the driver's seat and shut the door behind him. He hated the wet. Truly hated it. It was up there on his list along with the cold and the humid. Cool, crisp, dry days were his favourite. Autumn was a particularly good time of year. Late winter, on the other hand, he despised. It was always around this time of year where he came down with something, usually some form of tonsillitis (his body's favourite thing to catch) rendering him bedridden for around two weeks. The rest of the year, he was healthy as anything, but January got him every time. January, he hated as a rule.

He told Ruth as much, as she sat beside him, trying to fit all of her hair underneath her hat for when she emerged from the car. She, of course, was touchingly optimistic about the weather. Citing that it couldn't possibly hold out until the evening, she told him she was going to try and walk to the bus stop, tonight, rather than get a taxi. Harry's heart sank in his chest a little, as she said it, because it meant she was not coming home with him.

They were going to have to talk about how much time they wanted to spend with each other soon, he thought, nervously. He knew that Ruth was not the sort of person who lived life according to schedule, but he really was and he needed the stability. The effort of having to wonder whether or not they were going to hers, or his, and how they were going to get there, without leaving together, was exhausting. And come to think of it, they really needed to address the issue of not telling anyone. Up until now, he had accepted that she was not ready to tell anyone about them but last night, when she had openly taken his arm at the charity ball, he had glimpsed something that he didn't know she, herself, was aware of. They were falling together quite naturally.

Whether or not Ruth realised it, yet, they had become something more than two individual people and, however much they hid it, it was beginning to shine through in the little movements; the way Harry touched her when he really did not have to, on the Grid, the way she watched him for slightly too long, in the silences of their conversations. It was becoming obvious what they were and, because of that, they were going to have to tell their colleagues. It was a bit of an insult to their intelligence to do otherwise. Besides, Harry pointed out to himself, Ruth would be fine once the team actually knew. It was just the fear of telling them and the initial aftermath that was stopping her, now. The reality, in the long run, would be fine. Harry knew she was more than strong enough. She had dealt with Jane turning up, earlier, without a flinch after all.

Perhaps, he thought, as he watched traffic lights at the end of his rainy street, he could find out some way of 'accidentally' letting the team find out. That way, they wouldn't have to tell anyone and they could skip straight to the bit where everyone overtly knew what was going on. That would be an easier way of doing things. Knowing Ruth, she wouldn't feel ready to tell anyone until at least next Christmas and, much as he loved her, Harry wasn't sure if he could last that long. He was tired of sneaking around. He knew she would cope with it fine once she got over the fear. And they all bloody well knew anyway. Well, he thought with a little sigh, Erin, Dimitri and Tariq did anyways. He was not sure about Calum, who had not been on-Grid very much these past few weeks.

"Something the matter?" Ruth asked, from the other side of the car.

She had pulled her hair back under her hat and pulled her scarf up around her chin and all that was visible was her upper face and those startlingly blue eyes – looking even more startlingly blue against the dark navy and grey of her coat and hat. Harry could not help but smile slightly. She was beautiful, this cause of all his internal worry. Whenever he looked at her, he simultaneously felt the need to tell people fade away and intensify.

How could he need to tell them? She was everything he could ever need.

How could he not tell them? She was everything he had ever wanted.

The second argument held faster than the first. Harry supposed that was because it came from both his head and his heart. He needed the others to know. He needed them to know that he and Ruth were something. He needed to solidify what they were, to himself. It was how he had always been. He needed things to be sure. He needed things in writing, so to speak. He needed proof that they were going to stay as they were and not fall back, one day, into the painful thing that they were before. He needed them. He needed her to admit that there was a 'them'.

"Harry?" she asked, jerking him back to the moment and to her question. Was anything wrong?

"Nothing," he told her, sighing as the traffic started moving again and they were propelled across the intersection. He supposed it was a fight for another day. Today was busy and they had only been together for just over two weeks. He would give her another seven days, at least, before pressing the matter. "Do you want me to drop you off at your usual stop?" he asked, as they approached the bus stop he usually left her at.

Ruth eyed it out the window, perhaps considering the way the sleet was bouncing off of it, perhaps noticing that the people standing underneath the shelter were already drenched, despite their raincoats and umbrellas. After a few seconds, she turned back to him.

"Actually," she posed, gently, "I could just come in with you and you could drop me off at the side, if that's okay?"

Harry stared for a moment then nodded vigorously.

"Okay," he replied, as lightly as he was able. "I'll just swing around the side before heading back down towards the car lot." That way they wouldn't have to walk up together.

"Okay," Ruth smiled back.

So that was all it took, Harry marvelled, as he directed his eyes back outside at the street. A little bit of sleet and all her worries about them being discovered began to pale in comparison. He had been suggesting that he drop her off at the side of the building for days, reiterating all the time that nobody would be looking. Why was it that the moment it was her idea it suddenly became so much more valid? He would never understand women, Harry realised, pulling out onto the main route into the city centre. As much as he tried, he would never understand the inner workings of a female mind and Ruth's – which was undoubtedly one of the most complex – would always remain a mystery.

"Nobody's going to be lurking outside in this weather," his analyst added out loud, as if to reassure herself.

"No, they won't be," Harry agreed, keeping silent to the fact that, even in good weather, it was very unlikely that their colleagues would be lurking outside, ready to see who she was travelling in with. As wonderful as he thought they were, he was pretty sure the others were not _that_ interested. "You'll keep a bit drier this way, too," he pointed out.

Ruth smiled.

"Definitely a bonus."

Harry let himself glance over at her again, at the next traffic light. Yes, he decided, he was definitely going to have to come up with a way to let the team 'accidentally' find out about them. This was going to drive him insane, otherwise. Stepping towards each other, sliding away, all the while pretending they were not involved in this complicated dance. They were going to have to tell the others some time soon. Solidifying his earlier plan for next week, Harry changed gear and moved the car on.

"Definitely a bonus," he murmured to himself.

Ruth continued to smile out the window, at the rain.

.

He arrived at Thames House with about five minutes to spare before having to head up to a meeting with the DG. Passing Erin and Dimitri, who were ensconced in a very quiet conversation just inside the glass security doors, he strode quickly off to his office to dump his coat and briefcase before heading back out. The swiftness of his entrance and exit seemed to pass unnoticed in the general buzz of things. Erin and Dimitri – the latter looking rather as if he had just received life-altering news – did not greet him of offer any comment. As Harry slipped out through the glass doors again, however, and ran into Tariq in the corridor, the young man caught his eye in the fashion of someone who had something to say.

Glancing down at his watch, Harry motioned for him to walk with him.

"You'd better make this quick," he told the young man. "I have a budget meeting in four minutes and the DG is particularly unforgiving at this time in the morning."

"Right," Tariq snapped into place beside him, swinging a satchel off to one side of his body and flipping through a bundle of paper in his hands. Ever the technical officer, he looked slightly out of place, working with hard copies. "Look at this," the young man said, pulling one of the sheets to the top and tilting it so that Harry could see.

What Harry was meant to understand, of course, from the rows of letters and numbers, was quite beyond the Section Head. Frowning, he looked to Tariq for more information.

"This is a transcription of a transaction between two account numbers we know," Tariq explained, hurriedly. "This one, the one account receiving money, belongs to the man who met Juliet Shaw in Hyde park," he pointed, then moved his finger down to another entry. "This one, sending funds, belongs to a CEO of Yangtze Biotechnology Ltd, who are a subsidiary division of the multinational TerraPharm, who you might have heard of..." Tariq glanced up, looking for recognition, but Harry had none to offer him. Taking a few extra steps to catch up with Harry's pace, then, the young technical analyst continued to explain. "They built a rather controversially large research and development building in Essex four or five years ago and have headquarters in Brentford..."

"Brentford?"

"Yes," Tariq shuffled a little closer as they walked quickly into the stairwell and started to ascend the stairs. "It's their global headquarters, and I was just thinking that a tap there would provide full access to the network and might provide us insight on exactly why they were paying this man."

Harry frowned, feeling slightly pained. A large, multinational pharmaceutical company who had assassins on their payroll; it was so very Bond he would have sent Calum Reid, but for the fact that Calum was pretending to be a White Power extremist, up in Bradford. Erin and Dimitri it was, then – whatever domestic they were having aside.

Stopping on the landing, he turned to Tariq.

"What links can we find between this TerraPharm and Wood?" he asked.

"Nothing yet, apart from the fact that their subsidiary is headquartered in Shanghai. I am working on it, though."

"Good." A moment passed, then Harry sighed. "Right, I'll mention it to the DG and make sure we don't have any conflicting interests, in getting tangled with TerraPharm. You bring Erin and Dimitri in and brief them." He tapped the banister agitatedly with his fingertips. "We'll need Ruth to analyse whatever data you pull from the tap, but don't pull her off of what she's doing until you have everything sorted and Dimitri in place, in the field. Chinese MSS have finally sent over their CCTV footage, of the embassy in the weeks before the bombing and she will be looking through it using Calum's gait analysis software, to see if they have any recurring or suspicious visitors." Harry was sure it was even more boring than it sounded.

"Okay," Tariq shuffled his papers back into the pile. "It's not all. I have a message from Juliet Shaw, via the security guards around the safehouse."

"Christ..."

"She wanted to say that her contact has left her a five thousand pound deposit, as a good faith payment that she will reconsider their original arrangement."

"Did she?" Harry found the fact that she had told them mildly surprising. Knowing Juliet, he had thought she would have tried to find some way to keep the money. On the other hand, he reasoned, it was an MI5 ghost account they were working with. It's hardly as if she could get her hands on it.

"She also wanted to request that she was allowed a court date sooner rather than later," Tariq continued, "on the grounds that she would rather start her sentence than sit around thinking about it." Harry's technical analyst then shifted his feet, a little uncomfortably. "I think, uh, there was also a personal aspect to the message," he cleared his throat, "but I've forgotten what it was, to be honest, so it'll be in the email I've forwarded it to you."

And, if the slight pinking of the technical analyst's cheeks were anything to go by, Harry thought, then it contained something either compromising or almightily embarrassing – or, knowing Juliet, both. Managing not to shift nervously himself, Harry nodded and thanked the younger man and checked his watch again.

"Thank you for that," he told his officer. "I'll catch up with the situation later. This should be take less than two hours," he sighed, motioning to the door through to the fifth floor corridor.

Tariq nodded again.

"I'll get started."

.

Harry was ushered into the DG's office to find his boss standing at the far end of it, looking out the window at the city below. Sensing a contemplative mood, Harry approached slowly and with caution.

Initial greetings were perfunctory and empty, here. Harry was up here so often that formality had dropped between the two of them, over the years. The DG was an easy enough sort to deal with. In Harry's experience, he had always been fair, if tilted towards bureaucracy, and there had never been any requests which Harry had filed which had not at least been considered before being rejected. He was a stout man, of around Harry's height but with a full and rather shockingly white head of hair. It had been dark, when he had started the job, five years ago. Harry dreaded to think what would have happened to him should he have been the one to be hired.

Though it was never overtly mentioned, the fact that Harry had been a contender for his position seemed to be a slight sticking point, between the two of them. Or rather, Harry reasoned, not the fact that Harry had been considered but that Harry was really the only one left in upper management who outranked the DG in terms of experience. Since the DG's rise to his current position, all of the other Section Heads who had been older and more experienced than Harry had either retired or moved on to work outside the Service. Harry was now the old, battle-scarred lieutenant, with only two years junior to his boss and three years on him in terms of management experience. Harry was the only threat – not that Harry considered himself a threat, of course, Harry had not even considered himself a threat at the time when he had applied for the job. It had been HR pressure, nothing more. He had never wanted to leave Section D. Everyone else seemed to know and understand that. The DG on the other hand, was still a little uneasy.

"How goes the Wood case?" Harry's boss asked, turning to him with hands slipped inside his jacket pockets.

He was wearing a three piece narrow pinstripe suit, complete with tie clip, and the glimmer of a pocket watch on show against his waistcoat. The tie, Harry noticed, almost perfectly matched the rich burgundy carpeting of the office. Wondering if it was intentional, he stepped over to the chair on the opposite side from the DG's, at the desk, and took up position. He preferred to sit here than on the more comfortable chairs, by the window. It felt more businesslike and less like he was indulging in pretending to be a politician whilst his people worked away downstairs. Being a pragmatic man, Harry had always understood the need for a stratification of rank, but he did not feel that it should have to be expressing so overtly, in terms of luxuries.

This was an enormous office, he mused, as he watched his boss approach. He could fit at least two of his inside it. What on earth would he have done with all this room, had he ascended to the job? A pool, he thought jokingly? A bed, so he did not have to leave to sleep? His own interrogation suite, perhaps, for visiting politicians?

"The case is moving along," he answered, diplomatically. "We have several leads, one which promisingly links the assassin to a pharmaceutical firm in Shanghai."

"Why would they want Wood silenced?" the DG asked, bright blue eyes flashing with confusion.

"I wouldn't hazard to say," Harry admitted. "They don't seem to run in any of the same circles. Wood was involved, primarily, in energy supply deals and campaigning for human labour restrictions. We are investigating all leads available, however."

A moment passed.

"What is the name of the company?"

"TerraPharm."

"I'll have a word with John about it. See what they know."

Harry did not see how the DG having a talk to MI6 would be any more useful than himself having a one-one-one chat with Richard Neilson, but he nodded anyway. Sometimes pressure from above helped the cream rise to the top of the barrel and Harry could not afford to be proud when he needed information. It was worth a shot.

"I suppose you'll be wanting these budget assessments?" he asked, turning the conversation onto the subject for which they were gathered.

The DG grimaced and walked over to his desk, taking the file that Harry slipped across it.

"I suppose so."

The two men exchanged a glance and there was just a moment of camaraderie, in the face of a greater enemy, before the DG's expression slipped into his usual guarded one.

"Right, down to business..."

.

The meeting continued for just over an hour and, as Harry had expected, was perilously boring. By the time he emerged, it was lunchtime and heading downstairs, he dithered for a while over whether to ask Ruth if she wanted to join him down to the river. As he slipped back inside the Grid, however, he found them all up to their eyeballs in their latest venture – getting Dimitri inside TerraPharm's London headquarters undetected – and he realised that it was not really a feasible time for her.

He watched the team form the doorway, for a moment, then slipped back out again, heading out of the building and along the embankment, to obtain something edible from one of the food stalls. The sandwich cart which came around Thames House, had never carried anything that Harry could happily call 'food' and he needed the fresh air, besides. A walk was a nice option. Cleared his head.

Strolling along the Thames, Harry contemplated the day that lay ahead of him. Firstly, he had to call Richard Neilson. Whether or not the DG was talking to Six, they were supposed to be working the case jointly. He had to talk to the Home Secretary, too, to keep him updated, but that was not really important until they found something. Neilson, he would call as soon as he got back in, he decided, stopping and purchasing a pastry and a coffee from one of his favourite stalls (he was already fat, there was no real point in holding back, now). He would go over what they already had on the assassin, the man who had supposedly hired and handled him, and the company he supposedly worked for. With any luck, Six would have assets in Shanghai who could shed more light on Yangtze Biotech and TerraPharm. Then, Harry thought wearily, he could bring more information to the Home Secretary when he updated him this evening.

It was to be a day of running back and forth and, to add to all of it, his memo this morning read that there was an increase in chatter in White Extremist circles. Calum had sent him a report, which he read on the way down to the river, which said that there was something afoot which, it was implied, would result in civilian casualties. It was going to be a busy month, Harry thought, picking at the top of his pastry, pulling off flakes of chocolate. At least he had done everything he could for the Wood case, for now.

Well, he countered himself quietly, not quite everything. There was Jim Coaver.

It was well known fact, in intelligence circles, that the Americans had the most people undercover in China – especially within China's major financial and industrial sectors. MI6 had a fair few officers on the ground, but the CIA had assets all the way through corporations. Harry knew that Jim Coaver was working there now, running a similar operation to one he had been running in Cologne; working their people up to management positions, turning wives and family members of prominent businessmen, all to gain a better insight into the inner workings of a superpower. Politicians and Security Services no longer ran countries now, of course, corporation executives did. And, as TerraPharm was in China's top 100 business lists – a multinational with sales margins to rival the big four US-based companies – Harry was sure that Coaver had not let it slip below his radar. He was bound to have people inside or around the company. He would know things that Harry's team could not find from the system alone. The problem was, of course, that Harry had not actually talked to Jim Coaver since the Gavrik incident.

It was going to be an awkward experience, getting back in touch. Before Harry and his team had learnt of Elena Gavrik's true nature and allegiances, there had been a fair number of allegations thrown around – primarily, Harry would admit, by himself and primarily, he was sorry to say, involving Jim Coaver's loyalties – and these allegations had, not surprisingly, caused a rift between them. Coaver had reacted as any innocent man would, when confronted with one of his oldest friends turning against him. He had cut contact and turned cold as only an old spy could manage. Harry's suspicions had been so firm and his conviction so great that he had almost ordered his team to bring Coaver in to interrogate but then had come the discovery of Elena's involvement in the whole scenario.

Elena the triple agent. Elena the spy.

That had torn a bit, as had her later confession, that the boy – who Harry had believed to be his, for nearly twenty-five years – had always belonged to Ilya.

In the midst of all of Harry's revelation and sorrow, however, it had been Coaver's team who uncovered the truth of what was going on. It was the CIA, not MI5 or 6, had uncovered the identity of the man behind Elena and their plot to blow up a plane, over London. They had brought what they had to Harry and Harry and his team, in conjunction with Ilya's FSB unit, had worked around the clock until everyone involved was in custody.

It had been an embarrassing situation for the politicians, thought Harry, to have been saved from their new ally by their old one. It had brought a halt to all the talks of cooperation, too. Not even with the problem of intelligence flow from Syria burning low, in the background, had the Home Secretary suggested that they make another go with Russia. What with being newly separated from the US they were, for the first time since Harry was in management, standing truly on their own two feet.

It was a brave new world, Harry thought, leaning against the railing – pondering the events of last December, marvelling at how his old Russian asset traipsing back through his life had catalysed the smouldering embers of all sorts of past mistakes into flame. Well, good luck to their brave new world, in his opinion. They needed a new direction. Intelligence gathering was not getting any easier and, what with economies floundering and governments in turmoil all through Europe, it was perhaps a good idea to be going it alone.

Giving a sigh, he crumpled up the wrapper of his lunch and shoved it into his pocket, concentrating his efforts, now, on the coffee clutched between his hands. Even through the gloves, he could feel its warmth and was glad of it. Since the early morning, the sleet had stopped hammering down and the sky had cleared slightly, making the day even colder than it had been. It was nice to have a bit of heat against it all. It was nice to be alive and well after what had happened. They had all come so very close to disaster. It all came down to the little choices, Harry realised, the tiny moments where events sparked and gathered momentum. Ruth had told him, the other night, something that had struck him most poignantly; that if Tariq had gone home when she asked him to, and not stayed late to work on the surveillance footage he was running, then they might not have realised Elena was even involved until it was too late.

How small a choice that was, to have saved them from failure and bloodshed and pain. They had been lucky, Harry knew, to escape with nothing but a few bruises and a slightly damaged relationship with the Americans.

Still, lucky or not, Harry was not looking forwards to making this call.

Settling his coffee on the railing, he palmed his phone in his free hand and scrolled through the contacts list. James 'Jim' Coaver was near the top, as befitted his surname. Hovering over it for only a moment – it did not do to work himself up into nerves, after all – Harry pressed down.

The phone rang five times, then a crackling on the other end signified someone picking up. Coaver answered in a slightly weary sounding tone.

"Coaver."

"Jim?" Harry paused, licking his lip. "It's Harry Pearce."

A pause, then;

"I'm abroad at the moment, Harry, what can I do for you?"

He sounded cool, icy even, but Harry knew better than to take it personally. What he had done, in accusing Coaver, was not easy for an old friend to forgive. Besides, he told himself, he did not need to be friendly, right now. All he needed was to explain the situation and ask for Coaver's help. If he could get that, then anything else could heal over time.

"I need a favour," Harry stated, bluntly. There was no point in trying to disguise this behind duty. It was a favour. Coaver had no responsibility to do this for him. It was simply a favour, between old spies.

Coaver adjusted himself, on the other end of the line.

"I'm on the other side of the world, Harry," he stated again.

"From your hometown, perhaps," Harry replied, putting a touch of warmth into his tone. He could try to act friendly, even if Coaver was not in the mood. "I believe New Zealand is closer to our polar opposite."

"Amusing."

"You are in Shanghai, then, yes?" asked Harry.

Coaver sighed.

"What do you want, Harry?"

"I need information on a pharmaceutical company called Yangtze Biotech Limited. They are part of larger group called-,"

"-TerraPharm. Yes," Coaver cleared his throat, "we know of them. What have they done?"

"We're not sure," Harry replied, diplomatically. "It's to do with a British National we have recently repatriated."

It was an almost truth, really. The man who had failed to kill Torrance Wood in his home, in London, had been a British citizen. That he had been living in Shanghai and (supposedly) working for TerraPharm was another story – one that Coaver did not need to know yet.

"What do you want to know?" Coaver asked, shortly.

Sensing he was reaching the end of his old friend's patience, Harry hastened to explain.

"We think our man works for them, off the books, but grass roots information would probably be worth more than poring through financial records to untraceable bank accounts."

"Can't you just insert yourselves into their servers?" Coaver asked, a touch nastily. "They have headquarters in London and don't say MI5 don't do that anymore."

"We can investigate how they are financially linked to our target," Harry agreed, "but your people might be able to find out more about employees of competitors, or employees who took out lawsuits or patent suits against TerraPharm, in late 2011." Tariq knew that a large amount of money had gone out from a Yangtze Biotech Ltd linked bank account, to the assassin's, in December of last year. If the assassin had worked for them before then maybe his attack on the Consul in London had been on their orders. And maybe he had not been paid because he had failed. It could make sense. "We think our man might have been involved in cleaning up problems, for the company."

Harry waited on the line as Coaver took a second to think things through.

"You have an assassin in custody?" Coaver asked, sounding mildly surprised.

Interestingly, he seemed to be more surprised that he had not known about an assassin, than the fact that there _was_ an assassin involved with the company. It was not such a far stretch to think, then, that TerraPharm were involved with the criminal underworld. Coaver's people might even know more about their criminal dealings, Harry thought, letting a flutter of optimism flow through him. He might know of the incident that Section D were trying to find – some competitor, or problem employee going missing, in late December.

Coaver was definitely looking into TerraPharm. Now, it was all just a case of how they were going to play this, Harry realised, taking a moment to assess the meaning in his old friend's voice. Did Coaver want their information to help with an investigation of his own, or was he interested because he had found nothing on the company so far? Was his tone one of curiosity, or vested interest?

"We don't know what he is, yet," Harry answered, eventually. "Some of our sources say he is an assassin but we cannot get him to speak and cannot identify him off face or fingerprints. Interpol have him linked to several crimes but he has no adult convictions. We just want as much information as possible before we take the next step."

"If you send me his face and prints I could see if he matches any of our databases," Coaver offered.

Definitely vested interest then, thought Harry. Coaver would not offer to help unless he could get something in return. He was too good a spy to simply share information.

"I'll have to hold back on that until I have approval," Harry sidestepped, easily, "but I see no problem with that."

For a moment, all he could hear was crackling on the phone as Coaver presumably moved around a little. Harry held silence on his end, waiting for his old friend to say something. He sounded like he was searching through papers, or files, perhaps about to bring something to the fore that could help, thought Harry. You never knew.

When Coaver spoke again, however, it was not to offer him more information. Instead, he reeled off a number at which Harry could reach him during the night, and told him that he would look into the matter of TerraPharm's Yangtze Biotech. Sensing the end of the call, Harry felt the sudden need to add something personal, to what had been such a professionally-centred conversation.

"Jim?" he asked, catching his old colleague just before he hung up.

"I can't offer you anything now, Harry," Coaver said, a little wearily. "I have to talk to my superiors."

"No, its not that,"

A pause.

Harry shifted, wanting to say something, not quite able to voice anything. Why was voicing an apology so difficult, he wondered. It was probably because he cared about the outcome. He had always been like this. He had always hated conversations of consequence. It was funny because, in the field, or at work, he was perfectly eloquent. He knew what to say, how to say it, and when to balance it with silence. He was persuasive and could change the tone of a conversation to suit any needs. He was good with people – until it fell into a personal setting, in which it actually mattered what he said. Then, he fell to pieces.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, eventually, "for what happened in London."

Silence greeted his statement, though Harry could not tell whether it was cool or not.

Deciding now was not a time for half measures, he gave it a few seconds, then tried again.

"Given the information at the time, I thought I was making the right call, but you proved me wrong and I'm sorry for what I said out of distrust. None of it was intended personally."

There we go, Harry thought, letting his tense breath escape him in a rush. It was out there. He had apologised – hopefully well enough for consideration. He stood, very still, listening to Coaver breathe once and then twice, down the phone. At first, once the words had left his lips, Harry had felt a flood of relief to finally have said them but, as the moments passed, he became more and more convinced that he had not said enough. Was this one of those bridges that he had burned, he wondered, was there any chance of extending a hand in friendship again or was charred embers and smoke all that remained of them? He hoped not. God knows he had so few friends and old acquaintances left.

"I understand what happened, Harry," Coaver said, eventually. "Listen..." he paused, then sighed. "I have to go. I'll talk to you once I have something on your man."

Cool unease rushed through Harry's stomach. Was that an apology accepted or rejected? He was not sure.

"Speak soon," Coaver finished, then the line crackled and went dead.

Harry was left holding the handset to his cheek, listening to the drone of the international busy signal.

.


	21. Chapter 21

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_Chapter 21 – Trust_

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The operation to place a tap inside TerraPharm's London headquarters was well underway by the time Ruth was called in. Tariq was in her usual position, running point from the technical suite, with Erin and Dimitri in the field. The young male officer was the subject of today's undercover frivolities. Currently, he was lurking in the downstairs reception of TerraPharm's London headquarters, pretending to be a health and safety spot-checker, come to look at their technical department. Ruth, loitering near the phone, was waiting to play the role of the London office, once Tariq re-routed the TerraPharm receptionist's outgoing call. It was a role she routinely had to play, due to her particular talent with accents. She didn't mind the inconvenience, however. It was actually one of the more fun aspects of her job.

"About thirty seconds," Dimitri informed them causally, over mikes, as they watched the receptionist move over towards the phone, on the CCTV screen.

They had captured surveillance of the reception fairly easily, through the security system's link to the local police. Being secure, these days, was rather a choice over who to be open to, thought Ruth, her hand on the phone. You either chose to let yourself open to criminals, or to spooks and spies. She didn't dare wonder which she would rather allow in.

"We have audio and video capture, phone line ringing out..." Tariq replied, tapping madly away at his computer then pressing enter, looking over to Ruth.

She bit her lip.

The phone rang once, then twice, then she picked it up, copying the greeting the Health and Safety receptionist had given her when she had called five minutes previous.

"Good morning. This is HSE Merseyside Electrical department, Rachael speaking. How can I help you?"

It was a mouthful, but the bored drawl she had copied off of the department's real receptionist did wonders for authenticity. She could see Tariq smiling in her peripheral vision at her Liverpool accent but, over the phone, she was sure it was more than convincing.

"Oh, hello," the receptionist from TerraPharm greeted her, hands on hip from what Ruth could see on the screen. "This is Sarah from TerraPharm reception, London. We have a representative from your organisation here, today, saying he's been sent to do a spot check on our electrical storage?"

Ruth paused for a long moment, audibly tapping on her keyboard, then answered.

"We do have a scheduled visit. You should have a Mr Michael Taylor with you, authorisation number Delta Tango one five six."

"Thank you, just a minute."

She and Tariq glanced over to the screen, watching as Sarah the receptionist went over and asked Dimitri for his card and – after a bit of requisite faffing around – Dimitri produced it and flirtingly handed it over.

With those big eyes and perfectly symmetrical face he would go far, with flirting, thought Ruth to herself. He and Erin, both, were what she had always imagined spies to be like. Young, beautiful people living fast, dangerous lives. It had been a bit of a surprise to find that most spooks were more like her. Reclusive Malcolm in his technical lair, lanky Tariq and his enormous computer system, Calum Reid who was so good in the field but lacked, so completely, any form of social graces in a personal situation. And Harry, of course, Harry who was just Harry.

On the screen, Dimitri and the receptionist flirted a moment longer then the young woman motioned for him to head through, with one of the security guards, and came back to the phone and Ruth.

"That's him all checked out. Thank you for your time," she chirped, and then the line went dead.

Ruth hung up, too.

"Reckon Dimitri has a chance?" Tariq asked, jokingly.

"Unlikely," Erin chipped in, over comms. "She's far too pretty."

Ruth smiled, sensing the slight note of displeasure, under the light-hearted tone of the other woman's voice. It was a joke, but not a joke. Erin would rather scalp the nice young woman on reception than see her and Dimitri out on a date together.

Such was attraction, Ruth supposed. She could acutely remember wanting to hit Juliet Shaw, when she had first come onto the scene. Though Harry had expressed no overt interest in the then-National Security Coordinator, there had been little signs of how well they had known each other. They sat a little closer together than regular colleagues. He did not react when she lay her hand on his arm or his back as she read over his shoulder. They finished each other's sentences, sometimes. It had driven Ruth insane, watching from only a few feet away. Though she could never admit it, to Harry, she had been perversely pleased that Juliet had turned traitor while she was away. It removed her from any position of threat.

Turning her attention back to her computer screens, Ruth switched the video feed to the surveillance cameras along the corridor which Dimitri was following, listening into his feed as he chatted to the security guard about his favourite football team. Without a doubt, talking sports was the easiest way for a young male to gain the trust of a stranger, in the field. Fitting the description of a football fan almost perfectly, Dimitri was better at it than most of the others. He babbled on and on about keepers and the back line and offside passes, arguing good-naturedly with the security guard on the matter of a particular manager's choice to remove a star player from one of the most important games of the season. By the time they both reached the server rooms, which Dimitri had requested to see, the guard's body language read as if he and Dimitri were the best of friends.

"Right, what do you need to look at?" Ruth heard him ask, over the comms.

"I'll need to see a rota for who comes down here, to clean, but apart from that it's just a look around – make sure there's no cables loose or water damage."

The guard nodded.

"Right. I have a rota just down the hall. We can pick it up on the way back through."

"I'd prefer it now, if that's not a problem," Dimitri requested, sounding a little more business-like. "I actually need to be out of here in about twenty minutes. Really busy day ahead and I can't afford to run behind."

The guard nodded his head enthusiastically.

"Al'right mate, I'll leave the door propped open but you'll be restricted to this corridor and the room, because you don't have a keycard. If there's any problem, just give me a shout. Oh," he paused, as he reached the doorway, turning to Dimitri, "and the lights are a bit dodgy down here around eleven. They have power surges, or something, due to the water heaters coming on." He pulled a grimace. "Might cut out for a couple of seconds at a time but its nothing sinister."

"Thanks mate," Dimitri echoed his use of vernacular, then lifted a hand in a wave and headed deeper into the room, brow furrowing as he looked down at his clipboard.

The first page, Ruth knew, was a copy of a Health and Safety checklist they had requisitioned from archives. The pages underneath, however, were an instructions sheet with directions through the server room hidden every seven lines down.

From their position in the technical suite, Ruth and Tariq watched him manoeuvre through long, dark passageways, picking his way between tall server towers.

"Bleeding hot in here," he commented, as he reached the back of the room and knelt by the one marked out on his map.

"The fans usually keep the room at an average temperature of 18 degrees," Tariq informed him, in the voice of someone who thought his trivia on the matter was interesting. "But that won't be working, right now, because the light is on and the door is not sealed. Normally, the air is pumped out through the venting system and is actually used to heat the water tanks above the room before heading out of the building. Really, its quite a smart system," he finished, looking to Ruth.

"Thank you Professor Masood," Dimitri grumbled, over comms.

Ruth chuckled, but then shrugged when Tariq looked inquisitively over at her, mouthing 'what'? They were a nice lot, really, she thought, her team – Harry's team. It was part of the reason why she liked working here, besides Harry, of course, and besides the feeling of purpose. GCHQ had been much more of an exclusive environment. She had worked in an office, surrounded by colleagues, but her tasks had always been more individual. She had spent less time bonding with her colleagues because they had less to bond over. Here, the team shared life and death.

She did not know Tariq as well as she would like to, she thought, as the young man went back to work. She suspected none of them did, in fact. He seemed to spend much of his time holed up in the technical suite and she knew, for a fact, that he continued to eat more than eighty percent of his meals in the staff canteen. He barely went home, he never left over lunchtime and he had turned down every invitation which had been extended to him, so far, to meet up with the others at the pub, after work. That said, Ruth had not gone out much with the new team either. She had used to join Jo and Zaf a lot, back in the old days. Back then, though, they had all felt a bit invincible. She could remember laughing and joking at the end of an operation as if their surviving was the most natural thing in the world. Now, Ruth thought, each victory was chased with the knowledge that next time they could not be so lucky. Now, she could acutely feel that they could lose one another at a seconds' notice.

The thought was a sobering one.

"Right," Dimitri announced, over the comm. lines. "I'm done attaching the clamp. You should have access."

Tariq tapped away for a moment.

"Tariq?"

"Yeah, hang on two secs..." tap, tap, tap. He frowned. "I think you're on the wrong wire. We're getting a corrupted stream. Move the clamp down one and screw in again, a little looser this time."

Dimitri did as he was told, his breaths and movements sounding loudly over the microphone. Ruth kept tabs on the corridor, watching for the Security guard's return.

All too soon, he reappeared on the screen.

"Dimitri, you have company in about twenty five seconds," Ruth commented, in a calm voice.

"It's okay," Dimitri told her. "I'm almost there."

Another few seconds passed, and they heard a quiet curse.

"Damn it. Slipped free."

"You have twenty seconds," Ruth gave him an update.

"Okay."

Another five seconds. More cursing.

Erin stepped in.

"Dig the clamp in and Tariq will try to compensate for the corrupt stream, later," the Section Chief commanded. "We can't allow ourselves to be discovered."

"I've almost got it," Dimitri insisted.

"D – that's an order," Erin spoke, her voice a little sharper this time.

"No, really, I've almost-,"

There came the noise of something clattering to the ground and another swear word, a little dirtier this time.

"Dimitri!"

"...almost got it," Dimitri growled, shifting, his microphone hissing with the proximity to the electrical equipment. "Just another few seconds..."

"Officer Levendis," Erin snapped, causing both Ruth and Tariq to jump in their seats. "Screw the clamp, stand up and walk away or I will have to report you for insubordination!"

There was a cold silence on the line for two seconds, then a click, a shuffling, another clunk and then the sound of Dimitri standing up.

"Thank you," Erin sighed.

Tariq and Ruth exchanged the smallest of glances.

It was a well known fact that there was something going on between Erin and Dimitri. Up until now, it had remained a rather quiet and unspoken-about fact. If they were sleeping together then they were not letting it affect their working relationship. Over the last few days, Ruth had picked up on the slight awkwardness between them and gathered that they had perhaps encountered some argument, in their personal life. Whatever it was, she thought, it had now just spilled into the professional. Knowing how hard it was, to keep the personal and professional separate, Ruth knew she should not judge, but she could tell, by Tariq's face, what he was thinking. '_This is why you should never sleep with your boss_'.

This was the pitfall she and Harry had to avoid, she thought, biting her lip and directing her attention back down to her work screen.

On the CCTV stream, the security guard had arrived at the door just as Dimitri emerged from it.

"Excellent timing," the young officer chirped, his voice the antithesis of what it had been moments earlier. "Everything's checked out in there, so let's just have a look at that rota."

Tariq and Ruth breathed a sigh of relief.

.

The security man led Dimitri back to the front of the building and he got back into his car, pulling out of the parking lot and heading down the street before signing off comms. Erin remained on a moment longer, to thank them all for their cooperation, then she signed off too. With the data stream thankfully coming in uncorrupted and Tariq busy tapping at his computer, Ruth decided to work on her own tasks. Saying that the techie should send over what he needed her to analyse as soon as it was ready, she disappeared back through to her station and spent the rest of the afternoon chasing numbers up and down her screen.

At around two, Tariq finished his investigation of the TerraPharm network and siphoned off an enormous chunk of data for her to sift through and the digits across her screen became letters. Some of it was in English, some of it French and the rest Mandarin, but all of it was the same degree of frustrating and confusing. There were scientific data reports, procedural documents which were as long as Thames house, enough laboratory data to clog up the MI5 mainframe for six weeks and countless financial dockets. Ruth spent the rest of her day trying to match up expenses budgets to bank accounts, trying to find where the money which had gone to their assassin had come from. The bank account where they had found the original link was long-since closed down and it was almost impossible to backtrace account details without having access to the banking system. So, Ruth was stuck with budget reports. And more budget reports. And, just to top it off, more budget reports. She was almost glad when five o' clock came around and Harry popped in to ask her to review some documents an asset had intercepted from the FSB.

As six o' clock rolled around, she finished them too – their contents being a rather graphic explanation of the interrogation of one Helena Garber, a CIA operative caught red-handed in Moscow. The woman in question had been involved in a joint task force started in this very office, to deal with an intelligence gap on the ground in Russia. Five years on from its conception, the operation had been handed over to Six and they were running it, now. At least, they had been until three of their field agents vanished, some time last September. Ruth daren't think what had happened to the other two if this report of what had happened to Helena Garber, the point agent on the operation, was true. Burned, electrocuted, beaten, raped, half-drowned, pushed until her heart stopped then resuscitated. It turned her mood from bored to slightly depressed and anxious about the state of the human race, in under an hour.

Walking it through to Harry's office, she stopped by Tariq's desk, to see if he had found any better news.

"Not much to go on, to be honest," the young technical officer told her. "So far, I've found three employees worldwide who fell off the grid sometime late last year, two who committed suicide, two in a car crash and one in a fatal stabbing. Interestingly enough," he commented, "the one who was stabbed was married to one of the missings."

Ruth pulled a face.

"I've sent photos of the lot of them to Dimitri," Tariq continued. "He's driving over to the safehouse where our favourite assassin is being held, to hold them up and try and elicit a response. Nothing guaranteed, I suppose, but better than nothing."

Anything was better than nothing, but both Ruth and Tariq knew this wasn't a lot better.

"Yes, worth a look," Ruth agreed with a sigh. "Anything on the financial aspect?"

"Nope. You?"

"No."

They both took a moment to stare wearily at the screen on front of Tariq. Sooner or later, the information they were looking for would rise to the top of the pile. It was all a case of entering the right keywords, finding the right connections, having the right eureka moment at exactly the right time. It was all a matter of time, Ruth thought, giving a little yawn to herself.

Tariq stretched and leant back in his chair.

"Calum's back on tomorrow afternoon," he commented.

"All things going well."

"Team finally back together."

"Indeed."

"Well," Tariq said, "I was thinking we should all go out for drinks, or something, to let off steam. Do you fancy it?"

Ruth only just managed to hide her surprise. Only earlier that day she had been musing on how much of a social pariah Tariq was and now here he was, suggesting a work night out. So it was again that Ruth slid back down to the bottom rung of the socially adequate. Again.

"I suppose we could arrange something," she nodded, mind falling back to all of the times she had headed over to the George with Jo and Zaf and Adam, after a long day's work. "A couple of drinks, after work. Some food."

"Sounds good," Tariq grinned, clearly delighted to have arranged his first ever social work outing. "I'll ask Erin and Dimitri when they get back in for their debrief. You heading home now?"

Ruth nodded.

"After I finish this." Her eyes drifted over to the door into Harry's office from the technical suite. "How did Harry look, last time you saw him?" she asked, absently. She had caught sight of their boss as he rose from his desk earlier, to speak to Tariq, and he had not looked happy. Now, his blinds were closed and the light inside the office was low. "I have to bear bad news," she explained, looking back to Tariq, holding up the file. "Intercepted intel from the FSB. A joint-op agent down, in the field."

Understanding drew across Tariq's eyes.

"Ah, I see. Not good." He looked over to the office, to where Harry's blinds shielded him from view. "I think he's a little fed up, to be honest. Meetings and all."

"Fabulous." Ruth watched the closed blinds for one more minute then heaved a very long sigh. "Well, I suppose I should get this over with."

She looked back to Tariq to bid him goodbye and found him with his lips parted, clearly on the verge of asking a question.

Now, Ruth had never been able to read peoples' thoughts, the way the real spooks seemed to, but this time she did not need to. Tariq's eyes said everything. This was about her and Harry. Their friendly interchange about going out for drinks had put him at ease and now he felt confident enough to ask about her personal life. She startled at the intent. Her body responded in the way it always did to fear. Her heart tremored faster. Her lungs felt as if they were grasped in iron bands. The strangest heat rushed up the skin on the back of her neck. She was hot and cold at the same time, freezing as she burnt alive.

Ruth did not know why the thought of the team knowing, about her and Harry, made her feel physically sick but she supposed it must be accumulated terror of a hundred little fears, all compounding on one another. There was no one single problem, so it _had_ to be all the little things – all the little questions which niggled at the back of her mind before she went to sleep. Would they treat her differently? Would it change them? How was it supposed to work? What if it effected them? What if there was some legal issue they had overlooked? What would people think? What would people say, about him, about her?

The truth was, Ruth was a coward. She had always been a coward and she could hardly change what she was simply because she was in love. It didn't work like that. How it did work she was not sure. How she was supposed to become brave, in order for her and Harry to move forwards, she did not know. She knew she would have to figure it all out eventually, she supposed. She did want them to move forwards, after all. It was just... just terrifying.

Somehow, however, she managed to control herself. Barely, but surely, she managed not to falter or run away. Instead, she gathered herself and asked Tariq, in a pointedly calm sort of voice, if there was anything else he needed. For a moment, her colleague looked at her, as if he were going to go ahead and ask the question anyway, then he drew back. The intent fled from his eyes and he replaced it with a slightly sheepish smile.

"No, that's all," he cleared his throat, swivelling his chair back around to the computer screens.

Ruth swallowed and nodded.

"Okay then."

"Okay."

Turning on her heel, then, she walked slowly the long way around to Harry's office, heart thundering all the way. She knew it was not Tariq's fault, or any of the rest of their faults, for wondering about her and Harry. She knew it made sense and she knew, she really did know (she was not naive, or stupid, after all) that they were going to have to tell them eventually, but the thought of actually doing it made her entire body itch and squirm. She just wanted it all to bloody go away and for her and her boss to go on living the beautiful secret life they had been living. She did not want to bring their relationship into the real world because the real world was a dangerous place. Here, on the Grid, things were damaged and changed, picked apart and irrevocably broken; and Ruth did not want that for them. She just wanted them to be safe.

Reaching Harry's door, she knocked thrice and waited, feeling a bit giddy from Tariq's almost-question. She shuffled her feet, tapped the file against her hands and, finally, at Harry's gentle 'come in', was able to push through the door and step quickly inside, pulling the door back into its closed position behind her.

"Hello," she greeted him, a little breathlessly.

Harry glanced up, with the tiniest frown.

"Something the matter?" he asked, eyes lowering to the intercepted FSB file, clearly dreading what she was about to tell him.

"Oh," Ruth shook her head. "No, nothing like that." She took a steadying breath. "Just rushed back up the stairs," she lied, slightly.

"Right," Harry yawned, looked in no mood to pick apart lies from truth.

Ruth cleared her throat.

They sat and stood a little longer, watching each other. Ruth was the first to speak.

"I looked through this," she said, walking over to sit in the chair opposite Harry's at the desk. "It's not a happy tale, I'm afraid, more of a tragedy."

Harry grimaced.

"I expected as much."

"I've put a translated synopsis of the interrogation on the front, but the most interesting part is their recommendation the desk officer gives here," Ruth pointed. "The American must not have given them anything to go by because he classifies it as low grade intelligence and advises his superior to continue looking for a second 'nest' of officers in Moscow."

"When..." Harry began, wearily, letting Ruth step in and finish the sentence.

"When the second team were stationed in St Petersburg," she confirmed. "I suppose it's the best we could hope for, under the circumstances."

"I suppose," Harry rubbed his hand over his head in that way he had that made Ruth want to reach out and pull him to her. "At least that's something."

He looked dog tired. Mentally and physically worn out.

"How were things this afternoon?" she asked.

"Dismal," Harry sighed. "The budget the DG has assigned us for the next three months is ludicrous, Jim Coaver won't talk to me, the Home Secretary's office has filled my voicemail with messages asking about 'progress' on the Consul Wood case, Calum Reid's Bradford operation is looking unsteady, Juliet is making unreasonable demands and Richard Neilson is a colossal prick."

Ruth frowned slightly.

"Harry..."

"Well he is," Harry mumbled.

A pause.

Setting down the folder, Ruth slipped her hand slightly across the table, her fingertips coming to rest just at the ends of his. It was barely a touch but it was enough. Harry let out the remainder of his breath in a low sigh and raised his dark, tired eyes to hers. Sliding his hand forwards, he ploughed his fingers between the grooves of hers, pushing them up across the back of her hand.

"Oh, it wasn't that bad," he admitted, wearily. "I'm just-,"

"-tired," Ruth finished for him.

The edge of his mouth twitched into an almost-smile.

"Completely."

Giving him a little smile, Ruth sighed and shifted her hand underneath his, turning it over on its side so that their fingers could curl around one another's.

"I'm going home soon," she admitted, giving him a gentle squeeze. "You're very welcome to come back, even if its just for dinner."

Harry looked momentarily wistful, but then sighed and shook his head.

"Can't," he answered, a little miserably. "Too much to do. Paperwork up to my ears, half a dozen problems with this new lot of potential officers, and tomorrow I'm supposed to be figuring what to do with Juliet, in a meeting with the Home Secretary and some legal fiend."

"Sounds wonderful," Ruth stated, to hide her slight disappointment at him having to stay.

"Oh, it will be. Bureaucracy, politicians, lawyers and Juliet Shaw... my favourite sort of afternoon."

"Please try not to shoot anyone."

"I'll do my very best."

She smiled and they watched each other for a long moment, Ruth pondering all of the different conversations they had held in this very room.

They had been through such a lot together here, she thought, her eyes drifting across Harry's desk and up to the shelves behind him. She had flitted in and out of here on their very best and very worst days. On the best, she had entered with butterflies in her stomach, giddy with love. On the worst, her body had been sick with tension, over their latest troubles. She had seen this place through every kind of eyes a woman could have. Curiosity, anticipation, lust, love, nerves, fear, heartbreak; she had felt it all, here. She had watched Harry and herself grow old and more broken, before her eyes. And she had fallen in love with him over and over again. So many times.

Tonight was not a night to ruminate on that, though, thought Ruth. Tonight, Harry needed to work and she needed some well-deserved sleep. They could take more time, together, some other time. Right now, they both had other priorities – much as the thought of their first night alone, since they had first slept together, made her feel a little sad inside.

Pulling her hand back to her side of the table, she gave him a smile and stood up from the chair.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Harry said, looking a little apologetic.

"I'm home tomorrow," Ruth reminded him, gently.

"Oh damn," Harry shook his head at himself. "Of course. Rest day."

"Some of us occasionally take them, you know."

Harry laughed, softly.

"Okay."

"Goodnight, Harry."

"Goodnight."

There was another long look exchanged then Ruth cleared her throat and started the retreat, knowing that if she did not start moving soon then she never would.

Giving him one last smile, she walked over to the door, glancing back as she reached it to see Harry already poring through the report she had handed over. One of these days, she thought, making her way out into the corridor, he was going to work himself to death. It was inevitable. If the guns and the terrorists didn't get him then it would be the long hours. Men his age regularly died of stress-related strokes and heart attacks, Ruth reminded herself, feeling the fleeting anxiety as she always did when she thought of Harry's welfare. And wouldn't that be buggering unfair? They finally make it to some semblance of 'togetherness', after all these years, and they were ripped apart because of Harry's love of alcohol and chocolate covered pastries.

Returning to her desk, Ruth rifled through her belongings, deciding the cross-check she was working on really did need a little more attention before she headed home. Perhaps taking a little longer on it than she really needed to – perhaps hoping that Harry would suddenly be finished for the day and able to return with her – she spent another hour and a half making sure every one of her tasks was either finished or transferred to someone who would take care of them, during her absence. Then, pulling on her coat, she headed off towards the glass security doors. As she stepped through them, she noticed that Harry was still in his office, head propped up on his hand, frowning deeply.

It was probably for the best they spend the night apart, Ruth told herself, as she walked down through the building to the front exit. Managing time was one of the biggest difficulties, in new relationships. With her and Harry, that was going to be complicated by their spending most of their working days in each other's periphery. She saw him at least a couple hours every day. Some days, they worked together from start to close. It could quite easily become too intense, she reasoned, as she smiled at security and headed out into the cold street, wrapping her scarf more tightly around her face. Besides, she had other responsibilities to remember. Poor Fidget, for example, had been quite neglected in all of the excitement. Cats had a wonderful ability to take care of themselves, but she really did owe him a little more attention, now and again. A quick pat and a feed was not quite the quality time he was used to – when she had used to spend her evenings with him on the sofa, rather than with Harry in bed.

The bus home took longer than she remembered, but it was quite pleasant just to sit and read her book for once and not have to worry about holding up conversation, or holding herself back from jumping the man who was driving her. Arriving home, she headed through to her kitchen, stuck a potato in the oven and dug through her fridge for suitable toppings. Fidget was not the only thing being neglected, she thought, as she dug out a plastic container of tuna mayonnaise which was the only in-date box in the fridge. She was going to have to go shopping sooner or later.

Setting it on the counter, she drifted off into half-hearted daydreaming and jumped in the air, nearly ending herself, as Fidget trotted up and ticked the back of her tight-clad legs with his whiskers. Recovering herself quickly, she dipped down and picked up her ancient cat, carrying him through to the living room to sit while she waited on her dinner cooking. Setting him on her lap, she stroked his back for a while, giving him the attention he had been denied over the last few days.

"I know," she sighed, tickling behind his ears and smiling as he purred and rubbed himself against her sides. "You feel abandoned, but you shouldn't. Whatever happens, you'll always be my man, won't you?"

Fidget sat up and watched her for a moment then, clearly realising that his quest for extra treats was fruitless, gave himself a little shake and padded lightly away. As he left, Ruth wondered if she was fated to being left, by all the men in her life. It had certainly been the case so far.

It probably had to do with her gravitating towards men who were missing or searching for something, she reasoned. Her first serious boyfriend had been a quiet young man who left her when they went to University claiming that they both needed to 'explore his horizons'. He had ended up travelling South America and then joining Greenpeace. Her second serious boyfriend, who she met in her third year at Oxford, was nearly ten years her senior but split up with her because he thought 'neither of them was mature enough for a serious relationship'. (Within six months of this, of course, he had met and become engaged to a beautiful exchange student from New York – who, Ruth might add, was only in her second year). Her fifth boyfriend was Gary Hicks. He had spent the few months they were together telling her how important she was, and how glad they had graduated from friends to lovers, then he had received a job offer which involved a transfer to London, and he had ended them in the blink of an eye. He broke it to her kindly, of course, but it had been obvious there was no real decision to be made. The dream came first. She came second.

Ruth was used to rejection. She was almost entirely sure that it would never happen with Harry, though. Harry was different. Like the others, Harry was missing something, searching for something. For once, however, Ruth thought what he was searching for might be her. He had done the rest. He had chased his dreams and lived the reality, had a career, fallen in love, been married, made a family. Now, maybe, he needed what she could offer.

It wasn't much, Ruth thought – she had never deluded herself that she could offer any man a lot, riddled with insecurities and narrow ambitions as she was – but it was maybe what Harry needed. Someone to just be with. Someone to trust.

She would do her very best to make sure she could be that, for him. She wanted him to trust her. Although, she reasoned, it would mean that he would have to learn to trust himself a little more. As it was, there were moments where she felt him shy away, drawing back from intimacy because it had only ever ended badly for him. It was a conditioned response, Ruth realised, after the first few days. He was not so unlike a dog who had been offered food then given a kick when he had taken it. He was hesitant about coming forwards again, even if he was hungry, even though the want and need was strong. Caution could pervade a person and it ran deep inside of Harry.

Maybe one day she could heal him a little, she thought. It was not why she was involved in the relationship. All she had ever wanted was him, after all, just as he was. Just Harry. There was no expectation riding on them. At least, not for her. There might be for him, she thought, thinking back to the flickers of intention she had seen in his eyes. Sometimes, in the little moments, she caught glimpses of what he wanted, for them. He always seemed too scared, however, to push for. Eventually, time would make them braver, Ruth thought. Eventually, she would feel safe enough to tell people and he would be less cautious as a result.

She would figure it out eventually, she thought, watching Fidget play with the tassels on the couch throw. She had to. She couldn't lose him again.

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	22. Chapter 22

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_Chapter 22 – Outsider_

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Days had always seemed to pass quicker when Harry was dreading something. Hours dissolved into nothing. Minutes leapt by. It seemed like only three minutes had passed, for example, since Jane had appeared in his kitchen, asking him to meet up with Graham, but in reality it had been three days. It had all rather snuck up on him, Harry thought. Three days had seemed like an age to wait before seeing his son again, (because, as terrified as he was of the situation, Harry truly did want to see him. It had been far too long). But, suddenly, it was Monday afternoon and their table was booked at seven thirty that evening.

Feeling the proximity of the appointment, Harry's stomach began to clench with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation.

He both wanted to go and very much didn't want to go. He knew he needed to see Graham but he did not know if he could bear to stand in his presence, so great was the shame and guilt that he carried, for the state of their relationship and all he had done in years past. He hoped against hope that things would not devolve into a shouting match, like the last time they had tried to spend time together. With Graham being older and Harry being resolved to making this meeting work, they should be able to control their tempers. When they actually got together, however, 'should' did not seem not to matter. All bets were off and caution was thrown to the winds.

Jane had always said that they were too alike to get on – that the things that frustrated Harry, about Graham, were things that he did himself. Harry begged to differ. He simply did not know the boy. The boy was simply angry. Not that he was a boy any longer, Harry reminded himself. Nowadays he was an angry young man. Not for the first time, Harry wondered whether the evening would end with his offspring decking him one.

Giving a sigh, Harry ran his hands over his face, peering out at the Grid from the technology suite, where he was lurking unseen to the populace of his staff. Lurking, perhaps, was putting it mildly. He was hiding, in reality, hiding from his subordinates as well as his superiors. It had been a long morning. After arriving early, to deal with a temporary threat which had come to light overnight, he had spent the morning arguing with HR over hiring strategies, all of his lunch hour in a meeting with the DG and Erin Watts discussing more personnel problems, and then the best hours of the afternoon poring through performance assessments and psychometric evaluation reports. He had stared so long and hard at them that his head was starting to hurt and he still had only narrowed it down to a shortlist. He needed a holiday to look forwards to, he thought, giving a wide yawn, not a bloody dinner with his estranged and angry son.

Footsteps on the floor caught his attention and he turned on the spot, to face Calum Reid.

"Evening, boss," the younger man said, coming to stand beside him, slipping his hands inside his pockets.

His forehead was marked by a thin cut and a lot of bruising – the products of an eventful weekend at the White Extremist group camp, in Bradford. Harry supposed he should be happy that his officer was now in deep behind enemy lines and accepted as one of their own, but he could not help but feel a thrill of worry for the younger man. He had read the profile of the fundamentalist they were trying to destroy, the other day, and he did not look like a terribly forgiving sort. Their luck had held out so far but it was only a matter of time before Calum's cover was blown. Harry just hoped that their extraction plans were as bulletproof as Calum and Erin believed they were. Quite apart from the emotional aspect, he couldn't take the stress of having to hire someone else.

"What are you doing back here?" he asked the young officer.

Calum was good with gadgets and computers. In fact, Harry quite routinely assigned him to the Grid to help Tariq in preference of some of the junior technical analysts, but he rarely spent time in the dark confines of the technology suite when he did not have to. He liked to work out on the Grid, at his desk, next to Ruth's.

The younger officer gave a shrug.

"Contemplating murder."

Harry blinked, thrown a little off-guard.

"Pardon?"

Calum raised the file in his left hand. "My asset who disappeared a few days back; I think the group's leader, Jordan Milligan, had had her offed."

"Oh."

"Word round the camp is that she was informing to Special Branch. She wasn't of course. Completely innocent. Probably just in the wrong place, around the wrong people, at the wrong time."

Harry grunted his agreement, turning back to face the Grid, watching Erin and Dimitri poring through some incidence report.

A silence passed.

"She was only nineteen." Calum commented, quietly.

"I don't suppose you have any proof of murder?" Harry asked, a little more optimistically than he felt.

His officer shook his head.

"None. Just a rumour and a feeling." With a sigh, Calum lowered the file again, tapping it against his thigh. "The group's leaders are on high alert." He sighed. "It didn't help that we tipped the police off about that riot they were planning, last week."

"Had to," Harry answered, not willing to budge on this one. "Lives were at risk."

"I understand," Calum answered, plainly, "but him looking for someone in the ranks makes it a hell of a lot harder for me and my team."

A few beats passed in silence.

"Let's hope he assumes he's got his informer and leaves it at that," Harry answered, eventually.

Calum nodded.

Another few seconds passed and then the younger officer turned to Harry, moving to stand more directly in his line of sight.

"Sir, can I ask you something?"

Harry, who was able to smell a personal question a mile off, shifted slightly between his feet. This was what Calum had come to him to talk about – not the Bradford operation – why hadn't he spotted it before? No one sought him out to report if he wasn't in his office. This was personal.

"What sort of something?" he asked, cautiously.

"I just wanted some advice."

Unease deepening, Harry frowned.

"What sort of advice, Mr Reid?"

Calum cleared his throat, looking pensive.

"Hypothetically," he began, making Harry's stomach drop even further, "if I found out something compromising, about a colleague, am I obliged by my oath to tell you?"

"Hypothetically?"

"Yes."

A pause.

"Well, it rather depends on what you mean by compromising," Harry answered. "I take it this is not a personal matter?"

Calum frowned.

"Well, hypothetically, it could be considered personal as well as professional."

"But would it affect this officer's ability to perform his or her duty?"

"Well yes, although I'm not sure it... uh... fits into that category." He frowned again. "What I mean to say is, uh, hypothetically-," (Harry tensed his jaw, praying to whatever gods there were for patience) "-it might be about someone wanting to leave the unit."

Harry frowned. He knew the hours were long and the work was hard, but none of his staff seemed to be flagging, lately. Nobody seemed overcome by it and nobody had given the slightest him to him, or Erin, that they were interested in leaving. And it couldn't be Erin that Calum was talking about because he had had a very frank discussion with her, a couple of months ago, about her future with the Section, and she had made it very clear where her intentions lay. She had no wish to fill Harry's shoes as Section Head when he eventually retired but she certainly wanted to stay in her position as Section Chief. She loved her job, she told him, but she could not take any more hours on due to her daughter.

If it were not Erin, Harry thought, then perhaps Dimitri? But no, Dimitri and Erin came as a package deal, of late. He doubted the young man would want to stray far from the object of his desire, not when he was enjoying their work together, anyway. So, Harry frowned, that left Tariq, two junior field officers, one senior analyst and three junior analysts – none of whom had expressed any desire to leave. The admin girls, Harry thought were hardworking and vital to the running of the Section, but they were more replaceable than the other officers. He could not see why Calum would have brought this to him if it did not effect the efficiency of the team.

"Who?" he asked, now curious.

Calum faltered.

"I don't actually know," he answered, after a moment. "All I have is the fact that someone from the Home Office called HR, the other day, asking for transfer papers to be drawn up but left blank. I only know it is someone in our Section because I play tennis with the girl who runs the phone lines down there."

Harry felt his eyebrows raise, slightly.

"...Tennis?"

"Yes," Calum's expression slid away from worry and a little closer to mischief. "_Tennis_," he enunciated carefully. "Balls, rackets, courts, you know the game, Harry."

Ah, the inevitable sexual metaphor. No James Bond wannabe would be complete without it.

Harry watched his employee for a long minute then gave a little sigh.

"I know the game," he admitted, then tempered his acquiescence to the metaphor with a warning. "I also know, however, that intelligence gained in the locker room is subject to a great degree of hyperbole."

"It was a request from the Home Secretary's office," Calum insisted, looking a little put out to have his intel discarded so. "I could probably get the transcript of the call if you'd like."

Harry thought about this, for a moment.

It was really none of his business if someone within his department was investigating a change in career. There being nothing in their contracts to prevent them from investigating alternative work, after all. Still, it was always nice to be one step ahead. Looking back out, across to the Grid, he contemplated the pros and cons of adding another worry to his ever-growing list. Already, he had an assassination threat to neutralise, a Consul to protect, three Islamic extremists to extradite to France, two Russian diplomats to which he had to explain the fall-through of the Gavrik's cooperation deal, a dinner with his estranged son and a young lover to keep entertained. Could he really add a mystery unsatisfied employee to the list? He supposed he did not really have a choice. Even busy men had to keep an eye on what their subordinates were up to.

"Okay," he told the younger man, "get a hold of the transcript and I'll have a look."

Honestly, he did not much care which of his staff was enquiring about a job at the Home Office. Chances were, it was just an enquiry. And, even if it did go through, the staff member leaving could not be one of his central team, otherwise Harry would have heard of it. It probably would not affect the overall running of the Section. Erin, Dimitri, Tariq, Calum and Ruth he needed. The rest he could replace.

"Try not to root around too deeply," he warned Calum, to temper the younger officer's enthusiasm. "This is an off-the-books enquiry. We have no right to go harassing anyone."

"But it would be good to know?"

Yes, thought Harry, it would be good to know.

He nodded.

"Okay," said Calum. "I'll see what I can find."

"Mr Reid?" Harry caught his employee's attention as they young man turned to head out.

"Yes boss?"

"If you're going to be playing tennis with the girl in HR," Harry advised, "you stop probably stop playing whatever it is that you're playing with that girl in archives. Best to keep your balls in one court." He gave the now sheepish and slightly out-metaphored Calum a polite smile. "And I'd like those permission to socialise forms on my desk by tomorrow afternoon, if you can."

Calum shuffled his feet.

"Yes boss."

"Off you go, then."

Dipping his head, the younger man murmured some sort of parting quip and padded off the way he had come.

Smiling to himself, Harry turned back towards the Grid. His thoughts did not linger on the mystery transfer officer for long, however. As soon as Calum's footsteps faded from sound, other worries started to slip back in. His mind fell almost instantly away back onto the matter of his son. Graham. The boy who was now a man, but a man who was half him and half Jane. That had to mean something, Harry thought, hopefully. It had to mean that at least a little of the unconditional love he felt was mirrored back. His son could not really hate him... not really... could he?

.

Absorbed in his own thoughts, he whittled away the best part of half an hour, secluded in the technical suite. It was only Tariq and Ruth returning from downstairs with news on the Consul Wood case which caused him to have to move on. With a new firm identity on their middle-man in hand, Harry carried the files back into his office and set about making phone calls. He worked until half past six, when Ruth dipped her head in, with soft eyes and a comforting word. It would all go fine, she said as she dropped three finished intelligence analysis reports on his desk, informed him she had shortlisted the personnel files that HR had sent over and marked the candidates she thought would suit her analysis team best. Dinner would be fine and, whatever happened, at least he and his son were talking again.

Harry watched her, feeling the low burn of longing in his belly. They had managed to grab lunch together, yesterday, but apart from that he had not seen her outside of work since Saturday morning. He missed her. He missed her more than he thought he would miss her. The first evening was all right. It was nice, even, to not have to worry about what anyone else was thinking. He lazed about his house, made some food, read a chapter of his book. Then, at some point, he had thought something funny and – turning to share it with her – had woken to the startling realisation that he was alone. There was no one to talk to. No Ruth to awkwardly intrude on his silence. And he missed it. He missed it so much that he spent the rest of the evening moping around like a lost puppy.

They had no chance to see each other on Sunday, either. Ruth was supposed to be off, but a threat on the Underground had them all brought in at half past five in the morning – just in time to thwart an attack at nine. The rest of the day had been slammed and, reaching evening, he had returned from a meeting to find her gone home. His heart had fallen, at the time, but, in retrospect, he supposed it was probably good for them. It was healthy to spend some time apart. (Well, at least, it was healthy for most people. He and Ruth had spent the last few years in each other's every waking moment. Perhaps they were different?) The last thing he wanted, of course, was for her to get sick of him, so he did not call and ask if he could come over. Instead, taking himself firmly in hand, he told himself to grow a pair. He got in his car and headed back to his house. He had survived the last fifty-five years without her in his bed, after all. He could survive one day longer.

Watching her from his desk now, however, all he wanted to do was take her hand and walk with her out of the building. He did not want to spend the next half hour sitting here, trying to distract his increasingly nervous thoughts about meeting Graham with HR paperwork. He did not want to spend his evening facing the one person in the world he had failed most miserably, trying to justify what a shit parent he had been – what an all-round shit person. He did not want to feel bad, anymore, he wanted to feel good. But that was his problem, he realised. It would be all too easy to tell her that Graham had cancelled their dinner, cancel it himself, and disappear home with her to lose himself in giddy pleasure. It would be easy to feel good but it would not be right. Tonight, was about facing up to his responsibilities as a father. Tonight, was feeling bad, for a while, because it was the right thing to do.

A little pathetically, then, he thanked Ruth for her help and kind words, bid her goodnight, and watched her walk away.

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Arriving at the venue Graham had specified in is email (- an email, his son had actually sent him an email rather than speak to him for thirty seconds -) Harry stood for almost five minutes outside before he could work up the courage to head inside. When he finally did manage to walk through the front door, of course, the environment which he had entered into did nothing to settle his stomach. It was a small restaurant and bar, modern but not overtly so, trendy but not over-decorated. It was nice enough. But, as expected, he had about twenty years on the mean age in the room and, having come straight from work, was the only one not wearing jeans or ludicrously coloured chinos. Steeling himself, Harry made his way over to the bar and ordered a drink while he scanned the room.

He had been searching for almost a minute, his drink was almost ready, and he had just decided that Graham had not arrived yet when his eyes slid over to a figure sitting in the corner of the room. Lounging back against the back of his chair, the figure's face had been in shadow but, with the tilt of his head, he was suddenly revealed to Harry.

His stomach dropped away a little.

The resemblance, to what he had been twenty five years ago, was truly uncanny. There were differences, of course. Graham had his mother's slightly darker hair. His nose had a slight bump in it, halfway down. He was an inch or so taller than Harry, too, but all that faded into insignificance when you regarded him as a whole. A strange mixture of pride and astonishment bubbled up within Harry. This was his son. His grown son. His Graham.

All in all, he looked staggeringly better than the last time Harry had seen him, though. Staggeringly better, even, than the last photograph Harry had seen. No longer was he lanky and skeletal. His collarbones did not protrude like dark knives from his neck. His cheeks were not gaunt and his eyes not haunted. His gaze was calm, now, though still very intense. And he looked as if he had put on thirty-odd pounds, all of it muscle. For just the briefest moment, Harry faltered, wondering if it was wise to go over. Then he shook himself free of the hesitance. That was his son. His slightly threatening-looking, definitely still angry son, but his son nonetheless. He had held him in his arms when he was just a day old and protected him ever since as best he could – as best a limited man was able to. He loved the boy who had become this man, so he could love the man too.

Paying for his drink, he walked over and set it down on the table on front of Graham.

"I would have got you something too, if I'd seen you," he explained, for lack of a better opening.

Graham just drew a rueful smile across his lips.

"Two years sober, dad."

And he had ruined it in the first sentence.

Looking down, so that Graham could not see the cringe in his eyes, Harry wondered how he was ever supposed to make up for what he had done. There was so much anger between them and he hated himself, for being the cause, but he had no way of showing Graham just how much – no way that Graham would believe anyways. Words were fruitless. Harry had made so many promises over the years that were never kept.

Thinking of broken promises, Harry had a brief flashback to the day Jane left their family home, with the two children in tow. While she had wrestled Catherine into the car, three year old Graham had just clung to his leg, little fingers gripping tight, eyes wide and cheeks tear-streaked at all the shouting. Harry could remember holding onto his boy, even as his mother tugged him away, promising him that he would never leave. And then, after the divorce, he had as good as left. Visitations were missed and sacrificed for the job. Graham's ears grew immune to Harry's promises and the tears stopped coming for him, after a while. After a while, Graham no longer asked to see his father and Harry, too busy to notice, had lost himself deeper in his work.

How could that be fixed, he wondered, looking at the young man on front of him. How could one wash away years of distrust and dishonesty, or years of failure? It was impossible, a small voice in the back of his mind whispered to him. He could never fix the gaping wound between them. It was his responsibility to try, however.

Sitting down at the round table, ninety degrees from his son, Harry folded his hands atop the surface.

"Sorry," he apologised right away, throwing caution aside in favour of complete honesty. It was the only thing he had going for him. "That was thoughtless."

"I'd say."

"I'm sorry."

"You always are."

Deciding not to answer, Harry let his eyes trail over his son's face instead.

They really did look alike. So incredibly alike. He knew how genetics worked, of course. He knew that roughly half of Graham's DNA came from him. He knew that said DNA worked like a blueprint and told his body how to grow. Still, it was absolutely startling to see how the boy who had shared his eyes had grown into a man who shared so much more. Something about the cheekbones, the forehead, the mouth. It was like seeing a ghost of himself at twenty six, and thinking of himself at twenty six made Harry's insides roil with shame.

"Do you want to get something to eat?" he asked the man who had been his boy, to distract himself.

Graham shrugged.

"That's kinda why I asked to meet in a restaurant."

He seemed absurdly relaxed, considering that they had not had a civil conversation in almost ten years. Harry watched him carefully, wondering why. There was anger in the young man's eyes, but it was deep to the surface. On top, Graham was completely in control, as if he were setting his emotions about Harry aside for the moment, in lieu of something more important. Harry turned his eyes downwards to the menu, turning it over in his hand, giving his son time to make his intentions clear.

The waitress came and went from their table and they both ordered, Graham curiously waiting for Harry to choose first and then ordering the same. They drank from their glasses silently, for a moment. As Harry set his down again, on the table, Harry noticed the way his son's eyes followed it for a way. Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic he supposed, with a rush of pain. He still could not quite able that the child that had grown inside Jane – that tiny, pink human thing which had been so utterly helpless – was now an adult human who, in the short span he had lived, had already been addicted to drugs and alcohol, been both in jail and living on the street.

It was true though. Graham had lived a life. He had done many things that Harry had neither invisiged or hoped for him. The liquid in his glass was cola now, however, and Harry had resolved not to talk about the past, os he said nothing. He had resolved not to steer the conversation in any way, in fact. Graham had come to him to talk. It was Harry's job to listen.

"What was it that you want to talk about?" he asked Graham, slightly cautiously. It did not seem that his son was going to start the conversation and the awkward silence was threatening to eat Harry alive. "Your mother said that you had a proposition for me."

Graham's eyes lifted to his. Those mirror eyes.

"It's about money, actually."

He had known it was a possibility, but Harry's heart sank when he heard his son say those words. He so wanted this to be about renewal and forgiveness. He wanted a chance to make things better. But if money was the only way to bridge the gap, to form a bond back between them, then he would try to make it work. If this was what Graham needed then he would help him. At least they were talking again. Graham had not deigned to reply to his messages for years, even with the lure of financial gain. This was a step forwards, Harry told himself optimistically – albeit in a slightly different and slightly disappointing direction.

Nodding, he swallowed and raised his eyes to Graham again.

"How much?"

His son let out a low hiss of a laugh, almost a noise of disgust.

"What?" Harry asked, frowning, all of the sudden hurt and defensive again. This wasn't fair. He was trying!

His son shot him a slightly contemptuous look.

"I walk back into your life, after eight years, and ask for money and you just say yes right away?" He shrugged. "It's just a little pathetic."

It was meant to wound, and it did, but Harry just about managed to shield himself from a response. Taking a slow breath, he took a moment to gather his emotions. At least they were talking now, he told himself. He had known this meeting would involve barbed comments and outpourings of pent up rage. He had known this was not going to be easy. In his mind, it had not been quite so painful, but he had never been under any illusions. He had known Graham would not exactly rush into his arms – just as he had known that he could not quite bear to stretch them out, to welcome him. But they had both coped with harder circumstances than the one they were in now, Harry told himself. They had both faced worse demons than each other and Harry, for one, could handle a little discomfort if it offered even a slim chance of reconciliation.

Carefully, then, he formulated a reply.

"I did not say 'yes'," he stated, softly.

Graham's forehead lined slightly, eyes full of defiance.

"I asked how much," Harry continued, gaining momentum. As he talked, his voice gradually steadied until he sounded almost in control, almost calm. "I am not being pathetic, Graham, and you did not just walk back into my life," he told his son. "Your mother gave me this number and I know, from your sister, how you've been getting on. I know you are sober and clean and wanted to talk. That was why I agreed to come here, tonight. I know you've been turning your life back around. I know you went back to school last year, for instance, and, if this is what the money is about, then I would gladly talk about it. You know I can offer you financial help and, whatever else you're unwilling to take from me," he added, unable to keep the slight hesitation from his voice in that last part, "I hope you'll at least consider that."

The speech was a short one but Harry had purposefully not minced his words, or included any phrases with latent emotion. So precarious was their even being here together than he did not dare let his voice rise above a certain pitch. He knew that just one wrong move would send Graham skittering away from him again and he really did not want that. If his son had come to him, even through Jane, then he needed something. And if he needed something, then Harry wanted to help. The man across from him was his child, despite it all. Harry had made him, seen him grow, watched him become a person from what was only flesh. It was an ancient instinct, this deep, protective love that he felt. It was not something that a few years apart and a few horrific arguments could alter – however it looked, from the outside.

"I came here to talk, Graham," he told his son, exhaling heavily. "I just want to talk."

For a long minute, Graham stared him down, eyes fierce and guarded. Then, as if reaching some great internal conclusion, he leant back in his chair, folding his arms lightly across his chest, and nodded. In terms of body language, he was still on-edge. He was not going to flee though, thought Harry, with a surge of relief. They were going to talk.

As if sensing a break in the conversation, a waitress appeared at their side with their food and Harry and Graham took a brief interlude in the tense conversation, to arrange cutlery and napkins. Graham dug in to his meal first, wolfing down chips like starving was going out of fashion. Pushing steak across his plate, Harry toyed with it, not at all interested in eating whilst his estranged second-born had not yet revealed what was going on. Was he in trouble? Some old drug debt, perhaps? If his mother and Robert could not cover it then it was probably something big. Then again, Jane had not sounded worried when she had told him that Graham wanted to talk, on Friday.

"What was it you wanted to talk about?" he asked, eventually, unable to stand the tension any longer.

Confirmation that it was nothing sinister came in Graham's reply.

"I need to borrow some money," he stated, with no tone of trepidation or shame.

"How much?" Harry asked.

"Fifteen thousand pounds."

Harry considered it an excellent display of steely character that he did not choke on the chip he had just put into his mouth.

"Fifteen thousand?" he asked, just a touch incredulous, despite himself. "And would you like that in cheque or cash?"

"I have ten thousand in savings," Graham explained, calmly, "and I can get a loan, from the bank, for the mortgage on the premises and for the running costs, but I need a deposit and startup fund."

"Mind telling me what this is about?" Harry asked, as patiently as he could.

Graham raised an eyebrow.

"Mum and Cat didn't tell you?"

Harry shook his head, feeling another little pang of hurt. Standing on the outside, looking in, was something Harry had done his whole life but there were circles which he had always just assumed he would always belong. He had always assumed he would be an insider with his children, for instance, whatever happened with his wife. It must have been a bit like what Lucas North had felt, he thought, suddenly, startling himself by drawing the spook parallel. Returning to a world where he had assumed himself to be a part of, only to find it had all changed and he was now an outsider. It was terribly cold on the outside, Harry thought, eyes tracing over his son's face, searching for meaning behind the impressively stoic expression. There were no words to describe how much he wanted in – no limits to what he would do to get there.

"I'm starting up a business with a friend, from college," Graham told him, spearing a chip on the end of his fork and crushing the end of it idly against his plate.

He had always played with his food. Even as a little boy.

"What sort of business?" Harry asked, clearing his throat.

Graham hesitated then, visibly steeling himself for Harry's response, replied;

"Courier."

_Christ_.

"As in..." Harry asked.

"Secure delivery," Graham replied, "within the hour, in central London."

As useful as such a service sounded, Harry could not imagine it was possible – nor could he quite allow himself to imagine his son in such a job. He held his tongue, however. Graham was watching him with a challenging air, daring him to say something derogatory so that he could snap back. Harry would not give him the satisfaction. Besides, he told himself, at least he was off the drugs and the booze and the gambling. This was a step forwards. Just, again, in a slightly unexpected direction.

"I wasn't expecting that," he finally admitted, deciding honesty was the best policy and that Graham would react poorly to any attempt to congratulate him on the idea.

"You think it's stupid," his son stated, darkly.

"No," Harry corrected. "I think it's risky. Quite apart from all of the problems setting up small businesses in this economy, how on earth do you propose to guarantee a one hour delivery service, whatever the traffic and weather? Have you ever worked in central London?"

"For the last year," Graham answered. "I've been a delivery boy for a law firm in Westminster. I know what I'm doing."

Harry stared. His son had been working no more than a few miles away, for the last year, and neither Jane nor Catherine had said anything.

"I suppose you have a business plan set out?" he asked, to distract himself from the thought.

Graham nodded.

"I have it all worked out. Me and Jon, my business partner-...,"

He kept talking, but Harry did not hear it. He was still stuck on the thought of Graham having a business partner, Graham getting a start-up loan, Graham being a grown man. Memories of him as a tiny boy came flooding back, amidst the thoughts. Graham playing with duplo on the kitchen floor, drawing with magic marker all over the kitchen cupboards, being dressed up and manhandled by his older sister whenever she wanted to play dolls. He had been a sweet child, Harry thought, and not quite as grounded as his sister. Jane had called him a dreamer and his teachers had said he lacked focus, but Harry did not think either of them was right. In his opinion, Graham had just taken a little longer to find his focus than Catherine had. Whilst she flitted between fancies freely, however, Graham had clung on to his tight. He had always been a stubborn little thing.

Harry supposed it was the same, now. His son did seem rather set on this idea. Watching him, across the table, a hint of the boy he had been was visible in Graham's face again as gave a rushed explanation of cost estimates and a dozen other things that Harry expected he had learnt on his business management course, at college. He was actually quite prepared, Harry mused, watching the faintest flicker of excitement in his son's eyes. And it was the first time Harry had seen him look passionate about anything since he was twelve years old and he had taken him to the dog track.

He looked like he really cared what Harry thought of the idea, too, not just whether or not he convinced him to loan the money. His speech sounded like one he had rehearsed a dozen times and that thought warmed Harry, slightly. It meant Graham cared enough to try and impress him. It meant they were not as completely broken as he had thought.

"...by my calculations, I'd be able to start paying you back in two years," Graham finished up, focussing his eyes back on Harry again, for the first time since he had started talking.

Though he was trying his best to hide it, there was definitely a hint of nerves in his eyes. He cared then, thought Harry, feeling his hopes rise a little. Surely this meant he felt something?

"Well?" Graham prompted, after he had remained silent for almost a minute. "What do you think? I mean, I know it's a business arrangement. I'm not expecting any special treatment, or anything. It will be a very low maintenance investment. If my plan pans out then we wouldn't even have to see each other face to face again."

Harry felt the bitter sting of disappointment, but nodded.

"Of course. I understand."

"We can write up a contract and everything and I will repay all the money plus inflation interest."

"That sounds like a good idea."

A pause.

"Then will you lend me the funds?"

Another pause, longer this time, then Harry sighed and answered, honestly;

"I don't know."

The technical aspects of the plan were lost on him and he would have to investigate them in much further detail if he were to hand over the money. It was fifteen thousand pounds, after all, and, while he had saved up an admirable sum of money, over the years, it was hardly spare change. Mind you, he added to himself, if he sold the house then he could stretch to giving Graham fifty and still have enough for retirement. Not that that was a good idea, he cautioned himself, quickly.

"There are a lot of variables to consider," he told his son.

A strange mix of emotions fluttered across Graham's face, then he pulled on his stoic expression once more.

"Look, if you don't trust me, or you don't have the money-," he started, but Harry interrupted.

"That's not the issue, Graham," Harry sighed. "It's just that this is a big investment and I'm going to need a bit more time to think it through. It would be helpful to see a copy of your business plan," he added.

"I can email you the one we submitted to the bank, tomorrow."

"Good."

A moment passed. Slowly.

"So..." the younger Pearce said, eventually, "...you'll think on it then?"

The older nodded.

"Yes. I'll think on it."

They sat for a minute, watching each other. Then Graham turned back towards his food and Harry followed suit.

They ate and talked a little more. Conversation was faltering and awkward and there were several close shaves, where Harry almost put his foot in it again, but they soon learned which topics to avoid. Harry did not talk about Jane or Robert, or anything which Graham had been up to prior to getting clean and sober and Graham, to his credit, did not mention once how much of a cretin he thought Harry was. All in all, it was rather a success, even if Graham did get up and bid a short goodbye as soon as he was done with dinner. Pulling a twenty from his pocket, he lay it on the table, despite Harry's protestations.

"I can pay my own way," his boy insisted and, realising this was one of the moments that mattered, Harry slipped the note into his wallet before pulling out a credit card.

"I know that, son," he said softly, without looking up. "I know that."

In his peripheral vision, Graham twitched and shifted for a moment. For just a second, Harry thought he might say something else – might extend the sort of goodbye that a son would extend to his father – but it did not happen. Nodding curtly, Graham turned on his heel instead and headed away. Watching him go, Harry felt the overwhelming desire to run after him, to grab him by the shoulder and turn him around to meet his eyes. He craved the contact. He wanted Graham to be four years old again, small enough to pick up and enfold in his arms. Back then, it had been so easy to protect him.

The waitress startled Harry by appearing at his shoulder to ask for the pin code to his card so, tearing his eyes away from the door Graham had disappeared through, Harry gave her a polite smile and paid for the meal. Tipping generously, he gathered his coat and briefcase, then, he headed into the night. Outside, it was raining slightly, but he did not bother searching for an umbrella within his case. The droplets were so light that it barley bothered him and he was only going home anyway. Not that he really wanted to go home. The thought of his dark, empty house only made him feel like more of an outsider. The bricks and mortar of the home were there, but it was only a shell. There was no life to fill it.

Pausing under the canopy of a closed cage, Harry dug through his pocket for his phone, pulling it out and considering it in his hand for a moment. He was not sure he was allowed to do this, yet – was not sure if they had reached this stage of their relationship – but he really needed to hear her voice. And he did not want to go home.

After almost a minute of dithering over the matter, he dialled in a number and raised the phone to his ear.

Ruth picked up on the fifth ring.

"Harry?" Her voice had a slightly nervous tone. "Everything okay?"

"Yes," he assured her gently, as he stepped back out into the rain and attempted to hail a taxi along a very busy Great Marlborough street. "Everything's fine. I've just finished up here, with Graham and I just wanted to check in." That he just wanted to hear your voice was left unsaid, but very much heard, in the air.

"How did it go?" she asked, softly.

"Oh, it could have been worse."

"Good... good..."

Ruth gave a soft sigh, sounding very sleepy and comfortable. Wherever she was, Harry wanted even more to be there.

A moment passed, then;

"Would you like to come over?" she asked, softly.

Harry knew he should say no. He knew that, in this situation, it was polite that he said no and that just called to touch base. He knew he should tell her that he did not want to interrupt her evening or bother her but, the truth was, he did want to bother her. He wanted to see her, to smell and touch her. And his head was far too full of work and Graham to be coy.

"I'd like that," he admitted, as he managed to lure a young taxi driver over to the curb. "You don't mind, do you?"

He almost heard Ruth's smile, in response.

"No," she told him, with enough warmth in her voice to assure him that his company was, indeed, welcome. "I don't mind at all. The key is in a hollow brick, four along and one down from the gate. The cold weather makes it a bit of a bother to get free but give it a good kick and it should pop right out."

"That's not very secure," Harry reprimanded half heartedly.

"It saves me getting up and dressed, though."

"...are you naked?"

A tiny laugh.

"I'll see you soon, Harry."

"Thirty minutes tops," he promised her and then, saying a soft goodbye, hung up the phone.

.

The twenty Graham had given him covered the journey home and the key was exactly where Ruth had said it was. Unlocking the door, Harry reminded himself again to look into getting Ruth's house a proper security system. The one that she had was only activated when the door lock was closed and that was hardly any use if an assailant could pick locks. Climbing the stairs, however, he pushed all thoughts of work and locks aside and unwrapped himself from his winter clothing. Draping his coat across the banister, he left his snow-wet shoes in the bathroom, pulled off his tie and jacket and made his quiet way into her room.

Ruth was curled up in bed, when he arrived, with a book and a half finished glass of wine. She did not look up and held up a hand as he made to speak. Holding his silence, Harry stood in the doorway for a few seconds, watching as she finished the page she was on and then set her book, closed, on the bedside table. Only then did she lift her eyes to his.

"Hello," she smiled.

"Hello," he smiled back. "Good evening?"

"Very enjoyable, yes."

As she turned briefly away again, to set her wine glass on the side table, Harry drew his gaze across the delicate sweep of her neck, admiring the gentle way her tendons descended into the notch of her collarbone. Suddenly, the only thing in the world which was important was that he place his lips there, against her skin. Pulling off his belt and shrugging free of his trousers, he discarded his shirt over his head and walked over to the side of her bed in a vest and boxers. Looking up at him, his lover extended a hand, taking his fingers between her own.

"How did it go?" she asked him, tentatively.

Harry grunted in reply.

The last thing in the world he wanted, right now, was to talk about what had happened and, just from the look on his face, Ruth seemed to realise that. Tugging him closer, she beckoned for him to join her amongst the voluminous duvet.

"Come to bed," she whispered, stroking his fingertips. "Come sleep."

Shrugging free of the dozens of thoughts which plagued him, Harry did as she bid him to. He nipped in to kiss her gently before slipping beneath the duvet, laughed softly as she squirmed to avoid his cold feet, as he arranged himself around her, greedily accepted her touch as she reached out to run her hands across his face and neck. Underneath the covers, their body heat quickly filled up the space they had made. Shared heat, thought Harry, his limbs gradually relaxing after the stress of the day. It was so much better to have company on a cold January night than to be alone.

They lay talking about nothing for a few minutes then Ruth asked, again, how dinner had gone and, realising he no longer wanted to carry the weight of it on his shoulders, Harry told her everything. She did not say anything as he told her of the night's events, of Graham and his proposition – of the strange outpouring of emotion he had felt, to finally see his second born child again, after all those years – she just lay, stroking his fingertips and looking thoughtful. Eventually, when he had finished, she drew back with a sigh and met his eyes quite steadily.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, with gentle concern.

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "It is a lot of money but its not as if I'm doing anything with it and it would be nice to have some way of contributing to his life."

Her forehead creased, slightly.

"What?" he asked.

"It's nothing," she shook her head. "It's none of my business, anyway."

"Anything that's my business is yours," Harry offered, and he could tell the pleasure the comment caused her because, when she spoke again, her voice was warm.

"I was just thinking that you should sleep on it," she advised him, toying with his thumb between her own and her forefinger. "It is a lot of money and there are always going to be risks involved in loaning it. Even if Graham is completely trustworthy and does everything he says he will, the business still might fail. These things are controlled by hundreds of external variables and the economy is in the toilet, right now," she pointed out. "It's a difficult time to start a new business venture and a dangerous time for investment. If you do chose to give him the loan," she finished, raising aquamarine eyes to Harry's, "you have to be sure of your decision. And you have to consider that it might not bring you together in the way that you hope it will. It could end up that you lose it all and still not regain him."

Harry nodded, slowly.

"I need to think it through," he agreed. "But I also don't want to miss this opportunity to be back in his life again."

Ruth watched him with veiled appraisal, for a moment.

"Just sleep on it," she eventually repeated, lifting her hand to smooth down a lock of hair against his temple. "This is an opportunity to heal. Don't make it another excuse to fight."

Closing his eyes, Harry nodded. She was right, of course. She was always right. Always the analyst, picking through the information and making a careful decision. As her fingers rubbed gently across the back of his head, he wondered if he would ever find the right words to tell her how much she meant to him. Until he did, he supposed, he would just have to muddle through as best he could. It was the same theory he would have to apply to his family, too.

Ruth rubbed her fingertips against his skin again, leaning forwards to press a kiss into his cheek.

"Just sleep on it," she told him, softly.

Body exhausted from the day, Harry could think of no better idea.

.


	23. Chapter 23

_A/N - Thanks to everyone who is still reading and reviewing this. Your staying power is truly amazing. Apologies for the chapters being so LONG! All my best and hope you enjoy,_

_-Silver. _

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_Chapter 23 – Family_

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The morning after Harry's meeting with Graham, Ruth woke to an empty bed. Her first thought, quite naturally, was of work. Things went wrong quite routinely on the Grid and when things went wrong Harry was almost always called. Harry had not deemed it serious enough to wake her up, however, so it could not have been that serious. And she doubted he would go in if it was not.

Graham could be the reason for his absence then, Ruth reasoned, rolling over to grope around the bedside table for her phone. She knew that his son had taken up much of his thoughts last night. Tired as he was, her lover had staved off sleep for nearly half an hour, tossing and turning, before eventually relenting to slumber. Ruth knew he was an obsessive personality and somewhat impulsive, when it came to making emotional decisions, but she hoped that he had not done anything stupid like sought Graham out at such an early hour of the morning for some sort of interrogation into his future plans. There would be no benefit in that for either of them. He really did need to step back from that situation and think things through.

All of her worries, about a disaster at work and about Graham, were allayed, however, as her fingers found the hard casing of her phone in the darkness and dragged it back into bed with her. A post-it note was pressed to the front of it, marked across its width by Harry's small, neat handwriting. Turning it over, Ruth squinted in the dim light, to read it.

'_Gone to Vauxhall to see Neilson,' _was scrawled across the top, without any trace of being rushed._ 'Hope you don't mind, but I've moved your alarm forwards thirty minutes. Need you in for eight. Speak to Calum when you arrive. Harry. X.' _

The kiss at the end of the note did well to distract Ruth from the presumption of Harry moving her alarm thirty minutes forwards without asking. He was an impertinent man, she thought as she leant back against her pillows, but sweet in his own little ways. Snuggling deeper into her blankets, Ruth un-stuck the post-it from the screen of her phone and played it over in her hands.

A _kiss_. Such a simple mark, an 'x' upon a page, should not have meant very much, but this one did. This kiss, Ruth realised, was the first physical evidence that she and Harry had a personal relationship at all. Up until now, their messages to one another had remained strictly professional, despite growing closer in their personal lives. Even over the phone they had maintained a certain code – barring a few slips, when they had been particularly tired or particularly amorous. It was not a negative feeling, she was surprised to find, to have them implied upon paper. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was nice to finally have some solid verification that this was not all just an enormously detailed dream.

Spies were funny like that, Ruth thought, as she rubbed the paper of the note between her fingers. They took everything that mattered to them and hid it away. She had known Harry for almost eight years and been in love with him for nearly seven of those, but there was not a shred of physical evidence to say that they were connected – no letters or little notes, no presents or photographs. Well, Ruth corrected herself, there were a few photographs – Jo had left a few to Ruth, in her will – but there were only two or three and they hardly showed that there was anything to Ruth and Harry but a smile between friends. And besides, Ruth added inside her head, they were all kept in a locked safe box, with anything else that could link her to her colleagues.

These were the things that spooks protected above all else, thought Ruth, with a little sigh. They kept their identities close and their connections closer. Emotion was a well-kept secret. Who they were was merely hearsay. If Erin, Calum, Dimitri, Tariq, Zoe and Juliet were to die tomorrow, Ruth mused, nobody in the world would know that she and Harry ever had been. There would be no evidence, beyond this single kiss, at the end of a post-it note.

It was such a philosophical thought, for six in the morning, that she was glad when it was interrupted by the harsh buzz of her alarm clock.

Time to get up.

Rolling over, Ruth silenced the alarm with a thud on the top and swung herself out of bed, all in one fluid movement. If she didn't get moving now, she thought, she would never do it. Placing her phone and the post-it note back on the side table, (she couldn't quite throw it out, for silly sentimental reasons), she headed through to the bathroom and flicked on the shower. The tiled floor was frigid underfoot and she could feel a cold coming on, so she turned the temperature on the water dial higher than usual, until the water almost scorched her skin. Then, stepping underneath the spray, she stood there for a good long while, until her body stopped shivering and until she could stand the heat of it all no longer. As she stood, Ruth ran through her responsibilities for the day.

Firstly, there was whatever business Harry wanted her to attend to, with Calum, when she got in. Then, there was the massive amounts of paperwork in her in-tray and the screeds of new chatter she would have been forwarded overnight. Then, if she managed not to find any bomb threats in the day's intelligence, she, Erin and Harry had to be off to Consul Torrance Wood's London home, at just past two this afternoon, to inform him that their investigation into his attempted assassination had reached an abrupt and rather final halt. It was an unfortunate meeting to have to attend, being so busy, but Ruth had been involved since the start and she did not really have a choice in the matter. She got the feeling that if Harry could place anyone between himself and the Consul, to avoid having to talk politics, he would. Her boss simply was not a social person, she decided, as her body reached the point of having enough with the scolding shower.

Washing herself quickly and scrubbing shampoo through her hair, she rinsed off and stepped out, into the steamy bathroom. Grabbing the bathrobe and as many towels as she could find, she wrapped herself tightly against the cold of the outer house, idly searching for any sign that her aforementioned antisocial boss had followed this same route earlier that morning. There was none to be found, however; no water on the floor, or used towels hanging over the drying rail, (and Harry always hung the towels up, put the seat down, picked up discarded socks and plates and mugs, ect. He had many failings but being a sloppy housemate was not one of them). He must have been in a hurry to get in to his meeting with Neilson, then, Ruth thought, wrapping a towel around her wet hair. She hoped nothing had gone too terribly wrong. With any luck, it was just more inter-agency squabbling over Calum's Bradford operation.

Padding back through to her bedroom, Ruth dried her hair and began to pull appropriate clothing from drawers. Yes, this was probably just to do with Bradford, she decided. That was why Harry wanted her to talk to Calum. It would be more paperwork and bravado, but cleared up by lunchtime.

The thought of seeing Calum cheered her thoughts, somewhat. Last night's work trip to the pub, that Tariq had organised, had been called off due to Rosie being sick and Calum being exhausted after returning late from the North. So, Ruth hadn't had a chance to see the younger officer yet. It would be nice to have him back, she thought, drying and taming her hair as best she could. She had missed his quiet companionship and even his sarcastic comments. He was the only one who ever joked with her, or complained about Harry in front of her. He was the only one who did not single her out as different from the rest of the team – either by experience or by her association with the boss – and it would ease her to have him back.

Perhaps they could all reschedule their evening for tonight, she thought brightly. Apart from her meeting, at two, today was not set to be a particularly hectic one. Lots of work but nothing immediate, that would hold out past teatime. She would suggest it, she thought, dressing herself and heading downstairs to root out breakfast. Depending how the day panned out, she would suggest them all meeting.

A little smile played around her lips.

Maybe she could even convince Harry to come.

Picking her way around the kitchen, Ruth's mind dawdled over the idea of telling the team about her and Harry whilst they were all out, at the George. Eventually, she decided against it. It wouldn't do to make a big announcement and that was what it would be, if she brought it up over drinks. It would feel a little scripted, a little celebratory, a little too much in Ruth's opinion. She was far too terrified to tell them in that way – to tell them any way, in fact – but, with each passing day, she could see more clearly that she had to. She and Harry could not remain a secret indefinitely. The sneaking around was exhausting the pair of them and Ruth could tell it was beginning to make Harry doubt her investment in this. And she really did not want that. She needed him. Desperately.

She just had to find a way to tell the team without having to be in the same room, Ruth though, as she drank her morning tea against the kitchen counter. The aftermath still made her feel slightly queasy, but her fear of it all had to be considered alongside the benefits. Priorities were everything in their line of work. She wanted to lose Harry even less than she wanted to tell the team, so she would tell them soon. Maybe sometime over the next week or two, when the moment was right... whenever that was supposed to be.

Finishing her toast, Ruth resolved to decide how today and actually do the deed sometime in the next week. It would go on her list, she decided, along with that decision she had to make about the Home Secretary's job offer. Sometimes, she told herself, as she prepared herself for the day with coat, bag and boots, you had to grab life by whatever extremity you could and take a step forwards. Sometimes you just had to be a little braver than you thought you could be.

Of course, these things are always easier said than done.

.

As soon as Ruth got to work, she could tell that it was going to be one of those days. After an initial rush of the morning – during which Ruth had to create a solid backstory for Calum's Bradford asset, out of thin air, at a moment's notice – the hours dragged by, until two o' clock. Ruth spent most of them under the iron thumb of one of GCHQ's liaison officers, trying to deal with a huge influx of chatter from an Algerian group who had come from the fringe of the Islamic Salvation Front and were now causing trouble in Birmingham. The intelligence had come in thick and fast and it was more a case of organising the right departments to deal with the situation than having to do any analysis.

It was that dull sort of busy which rendered her almost comatose. Ear kept firmly pressed to the phone over lunch time, Ruth argued her way through situations which should, strictly speaking, not have come to pass in the first place. An admin girl had misfiled some report; GCHQ could not find MI5's previous assessment on the subject; Special Branch were hounding the wrong person and that wrong person had come to hound Section D, in turn. This was just part of her job, she reminded herself – as she negotiated with another sleep-deprived analyst, on the other end of the line – and she loved her job, as a whole, she really did. It was interesting, fast-paced and she was good at it.

Ruth had never been one to shirk from defining herself by what she did and she supposed that was where the problem arose, with the offer from the Home Secretary. Security Liaison to the Home Office was a prestigious title and she was both honoured and intrigued by the idea of developing her career, beyond the Security Service. On the other hand, there was a hell of a lot happening in her life, at the moment, and she was not entirely sure she could cope with being 're-defined' any more than she already had been. The job might have been more up her original career path, but she really did enjoy what she was doing, now. And, if she went to work for Towers, she would no longer get to see Harry every day. Mind you, love was a foolish thing to design your life around.

Setting her job prospects aside as a question to be resolved by the end of the week, Ruth finished up her last boring phone call of the morning and moved on to preparation for the meeting with Torrance Wood, at two. Harry wanted an alteration to the report she had compiled for the Home Secretary yesterday, with emphasis on the complete lack of useable information they had left to work with. It was ass-covering stuff, but Ruth tapped quickly away at her computer to get it done. Hopefully the meeting would not dissolve into a blaming frenzy, she thought, running through the synopsis and the recommendations again. If Wood got short with anything they had done, Harry would snap. Ruth knew he would. There was so much on their plates, right now, and he was not terribly good at politics and bureaucracy at the best of times.

And speaking of Harry, she thought, looking up to where his office wall remained firmly blinded and dark, he had been absent from the Grid all morning. Whatever his meeting with Neilson had yielded, she thought, it had either been very good or very, very bad.

Deciding she was as done as she was going to get, barring a secretary magically appearing out of nowhere and finishing up her data entry for her (and Ruth was fairly sure Harry's budget could not stretch to a secretary for her analysis team, no matter how nicely she asked) Ruth put the finishing touches on her report and called it a day. The clock read five past one and the meeting with Consul Wood was beginning to loom. Rising from her chair, then, Ruth made her quiet way over to Erin's.

The Section Chief was sitting with her face half hidden behind her hand, with her phone pressed to her ear, when Ruth arrived. For an awkward moment, she noticed her superior's closed eyes and worried that she was going to have to wake her from slumbering on the Grid. Fortunately, however, closed eyes were merely a sign of concentration than weariness and, as Ruth came to a halt just to the side of the desk, Erin's eyes snapped open and she shot the analyst a little half smile.

"Just a moment," she murmured, quietly. "I know we're running late but I really need to get this sorted before I go. Rosie's doctor," she explained. "She's spiked a temperature again and my mum's having to take her into hospital to get her some antibiotics. They think it might be tonsillitis."

Ruth gave her a tiny nod of encouragement.

"Take as much time as you need," she assured her boss. "Wood's house is no more than half an hour away."

Erin's mouth twitched in a tired smile of thanks, and she turned back to the phone, presumably listening to call music as she waited for someone.

Ruth motioned that she was going to collect her things and padded back off, pausing as she crossed the Grid to speak to Tariq about a cross-search they were running together and then to speak to Calum, telling the younger officer that he looked like death warmed up and should probably eat something before he fell over. Returning to her desk, then, she threw her things in her bag and her bag over her back. She was just fighting with the errant sleeve of her coat when Harry appeared behind her so suddenly that she nearly jumped about a foot in the air.

"Bloody hell!"

"Sorry," her boss winced, with apologetic eyes.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack," Ruth exclaimed.

"I thought you saw me coming."

"I didn't. You're incredibly sneaky."

"I suppose I should take that as a compliment, considering..."

Ruth couldn't help but smile a little at that one.

"I suppose."

Their eyes hooked for just a second, the secret things they now knew at each other coming to the forefront of their thoughts, then Ruth forced herself to break the gaze.

Lowering her eyes, she silently appraised her boss's attire. He was dressed in the same trousers and jacket as yesterday, with a different shirt and no tie. He hadn't been home, then, since his meeting this morning. Picking up on the fact that his hair was slightly ruffled up the wrong way, Ruth determined also that he had been outside – walking outside, if the faint scent of London clinging to his jacket was anything to go by. And the only reason he would walk, Ruth told herself, was to cool off after a particularly irritating meeting. He had been in with Neilson all morning then, at Vauxhall.

"Just back?" she asked, turning her attentions back to slipping inside her thick winter coat.

Harry sighed and nodded.

"Bloody nightmare."

"What's happened?"

"Neilson is pressing about the Wood case. Wants us to turn everything we have over to him, now that our TerraPharm lead has run cold. Says that, if we're finished, they might as well pick it up – says he's willing to help us out with one less open case on our books."

"And why would he do that?" Ruth frowned.

"Damned if I know. He is not a man renowned for gregarious cooperation." Harry shifted, hands finding their way into pockets. "A helpful spook always makes me nervous," he added, darkly.

Ruth more than understood. Any departure from normal behaviour meant there was a high possibility of something being afoot. Normal behaviour for Richard Neilson was to stay as far from Harry Pearce as possible and to take what intelligence he could while offering as little as he could, in return. Offering to take a dead-end case, then, spoke of ulterior motives. Even considering their Sister Service's recent revival of inter-agency cooperation.

"Erin's almost ready to head over to Wood's," she told Harry, watching his expression.

Harry's face formed the shadow of irritation, then he nodded.

"Best get this over and done with as quick as possible."

"What are you going to say to him?" Ruth asked.

"I'm going to make it very clear that we are not responsible for whatever will befall him when he goes back to Shanghai."

"He's definitely going back, then?" Ruth asked, "even though there are no leads on who hired our assassin?"

"So they're saying, in Whitehall."

"They say lots of things in Whitehall," Ruth pointed out.

A strange suspicious expression passed across Harry's face and he scanned her face.

"Yes. That they do..." There was a moment's pause, in conversation, then the look on his face faded and he turned back to look across the Grid. "I'm afraid this rumour is probably true, however. Wood is making an announcement to his favourite reporter at five tonight and he's made it fairly clear to the Prime Minister what it will be about. The whole situation is turning into a media circus," Harry sighed, eyes drifting over the Grid – to Tariq, working with Calum at his station, then onto Dimitri, now on the phone to whomever Erin was on the phone to a few minutes ago – checking in on his people, making sure his team were accounted for. "The bloody man's being made out to look like a hero," he continued, "and his party, of course, are doing nothing to help the matter."

"Nothing better than a hero to distract the masses from the government's financial woes and military screw ups," Ruth intoned.

Harry gave a soft half-grunt of agreement and turned back towards the Grid.

"Well, one thing better," he muttered, after a moment. "A martyr often gets a front page story."

Ruth shifted on the spot.

It wasn't often, but sometimes Harry would make her uneasy, with his brutal honesty of a situation. Harry was a man limited to the immediate because he did not know what future he had left. In terms of affection and intimacy, that made him intensely passionate. But, in terms of being a spook, it made him rather blunt about facts that others, including Ruth, often glossed over. He had been in this business for a very long time, she reminded herself, and death came with the territory. Still, sometimes he was uncomfortably comfortable around the subject.

Lowering her eyes to her hands, Ruth picked at her sleeves while Harry wrinkled his nose at his own comment, gave his head a little shake and turned back to her, eyebrows lifting to clear the dark expression from his face.

"How are you?" he asked, his tone a little quieter, this time, and purposefully light. Testing the waters, Ruth figured, before approaching why he had left before she woke this morning.

Why he expected it to be a problem, Ruth was not sure, but the fact that he did, in itself, made her suddenly and irrationally nervous. Perhaps him leaving early was not as innocent as she had thought, she mused, watching the flicks of dark brown amongst the lighter in Harry's hazel eyes. Perhaps leaving early was what he had used to do when he had been married and was sneaking off to see his mistress. Of course, Ruth did not think Harry had been off to see some other woman, this morning – she fully believed that he had been going to a meeting – but the fact that _he_ thought it looked guilty made her almost as uneasy as when he glibly commented about assassination.

"Fine," she answered calmly, a little too calmly, perhaps.

"Good."

They watched each other for another moment.

"Sorry about earlier," Harry said. Earlier, Ruth could only interpret, being his way of referring to his leaving without announcing that they were sleeping together. "Forgot about the meeting until my phone alert went off. Had to rush over. Barely made it in time."

"Everything went well, though?" Ruth asked. "Apart from Neilson's strange interest in taking over our cold case?"

Harry nodded.

"He's up to something but, until I know what, I wouldn't hazard a guess." He shuffled his feet. "Richard might be my counterpart but he rather outweighs me, in terms of bureaucratic power."

Ruth nodded, secretly thinking that bureaucratic power was all very well in a board room but, if she were a terrorist down a dark alley, she would still rather be caught with Richard Neilson than Harry Pearce. She kept quiet, however, about this insight her lover/boss's reputation. His ego was big enough. It didn't need any stroking.

"I suppose we'll see, in time," she told him instead.

Harry gave a little sigh.

"I suppose we will."

They watched over the Grid, together, until Erin was ready to go.

.

By the time the three of them arrived at Torrance Wood's London house, the press had already gathered like flies on the street outside. Harry took one look at the lot of them and directed his driver around to the next street. There was a back door to the house and, as he darkly pointed out, it was better for a spook to brave a few garden fences than a minefield of journalists, all with their own photographers. Ruth, who wouldn't much have cared for her picture to be in the paper even if she wasn't a spook, agreed.

Erin took the lead, entering the house, to be cheerfully greeted by the Home Secretary and one of Richard Neilson's men, who had been sent to partake in the final meeting on the case. Harry looked visibly relieved, in Ruth's opinion, to find that Neilson himself was absent but said relief vanished when Consul Torrance Wood sprang onto the scene – the description 'sprang' not entirely a hyperbole. The man had a bounce in his step, as if their reaching the end of the case freed him in some way. He happily greeted the lot of them and led them back through to his sitting room where another two men, presumably of his security guard, or international relations personnel, were waiting, brandy in hand.

Ruth and Erin exchanged a very small glance as they entered, finding themselves vastly outnumbered by men – and not, Ruth reminded herself, for the first time on this case. It seemed that while politics was now an equal opportunities game, the international version of the game was still very much male dominated. And certainly, in this room, the testosterone levels were high. While the Home Secretary walked around greeting everyone and Harry stood hackling at the same, the young man from Neilson's team immediately started proceedings, expressing his apologies to Torrance Wood that nothing had been found and elucidating just how much Six had been doing to assist Five's operation – thus planting Harry and his team firmly in the limelight for blame.

Whatever could be said against Torrance Wood, however, he was a fair and good natured sort. His slightly irritating cheerfulness was pervasive and, by the end of the meeting, even Neilson's man had failed to rile him on the subject of the man behind his assassination not being captured. It seemed that Wood took the rather anti-existentialist view that whatever would happen would happen and he would just have to face it when it did. While this view might be the root of Harry's aversion to the man, (Harry being all about control and preparation and unable to understand those who weren't), Ruth noted that it rather relieved Section D of any culpability. If the man was going to cheerfully head back to Shanghai despite the threat on his life remaining open, then they could hardly be responsible for his welfare, after all. Ruth's report had advised him not to go.

As the official portion of the meeting ended and the talk turned to the transfer of the Consul's security back to his own security detail, Ruth quietly excused herself to visit the loo. She did not particularly need but she was no longer needed here and her desire to have a private look around the Consul's residence was too tempting to resist.

After leaving the (rather posh) bathroom, then, she took a slow detour around the second floor of the mansion-type house, investigating the seemingly endless collection of well furnished but very much unused rooms. She knew, from the background details, that Torrance Wood was the son of an old banking family and a very rich man. She also knew that he was worth several million and that his house would be sized and furnished accordingly. But, from meeting the man in person, she had not quite expected the extent of his wealth.

The walls of one of the rooms upstairs were papered with silk. The carpets were plush and completely silenced her footsteps. The bathroom was all of marble and several of the old paintings she passed, on the way back down the hall, sported names which would not have looked out of place in the Tate.

Ruth continued along, meandering slowly back down towards the ground floor and the meeting room, pausing along the way to pick up any stray pieces of insight that she could. She was busy investigating the side of a wireless router – rather conveniently placed in the hallway of the upper level – when a shadow passed across the edge of her peripheral vision.

Startling, Ruth turned on the spot, finding herself face to face with a boy. Or, rather, a teenage representation of Torrance Wood.

"Oh," she murmured, blinking back her surprise to find the boy so alike his father. "Hello..."

Todd. His name was Todd, she remembered, from the background files on the Consul. He was fifteen and had attended school in England, at his father's old House, before moving to Shanghai with his family three years ago. From the records they had on him, she had gathered that he was a quiet child. Average grades, average intelligence, average ability for getting himself into trouble. He had been arrested once or twice, for carrying cannabis on school property, but was let off with a warning – no doubt, Ruth supposed, due to his father's influence or money. According to the file, she thought, recalling all the details she could from the MI5 computer screens, Todd had been the only member of the Wood family in the building when the embassy had come under attack, during the first assassination attempt in Shanghai. Standing in the bright light of the hallway, Ruth could see that he bore a narrow cut across his forehead to prove it.

Realising she needed to say something soon, before appearing like a complete weirdo, she cleared her throat and asked him, hesitantly, his name.

"You must be Todd," she suggested, haltingly, as the boy continued to watch her.

"Yeah..." his light blue eyes scanned her, suspiciously. "Do you work for my dad?"

Ruth sensed a question about why she had been checking out the wireless router coming so she plunged headlong into her explanation, giving the kid no time to think it through.

"I work with the government," she explained, with what she hoped was a friendly smile. "I'm a technical analyst, which means I-,"

"Deal with computers and shit... I know," the boy said, as if she was thick.

Children today, Ruth mused, watching Todd Wood watch her. She would never have dared to speak like that to an adult who had been working with her parents, under their roof. Then again, she had never been a particularly adventurous teen.

"I was just coming from the bathroom and I got turned around," she lied, bluntly. "I was distracted by the router. It's not the same connection as your father's work network, or your home registered one."

"It's mine," Todd explained, with a little shrug.

"Do a lot of gaming?" Ruth asked.

He raised an eyebrow.

"I'm sorry, lady, but there is no way you are a gamer."

The hint of a smile around his mouth and the sheer, obvious correctness of his statement caused Ruth's lips to twitch upwards, too.

"No, I'm not," she admitted. "But I have a friend, in my department, who runs an altered D-Link DGL-4500, which has simultaneous 2.4Gig and 5Gig band support. This model has similar specs and it looks like its altered, too." She paused, thanking god that she had been listening when Tariq was rambling on the other night. "Did you fix it yourself?"

A little shy, the boy nodded.

"It doesn't say, in our background checks, that you are interested in computing."

The boy shook his head.

"I like to make things, but I'm not a hacker. I'm rubbish at all that coding shit."

There went the boy-wonder-computer-genius behind-it-all theory, thought Ruth, fidgeting with her coat to distract herself from the situation. So much terrorism was done through cyber crime, now, that they had to automatically suspect everyone above a certain level of IT competency in a case. Todd would have been a nice fit. Close enough to his father's people to know security plans and layout details that the bombers and assassin knew – young enough that nobody would suspect. But, of course, he was self-professed 'not a hacker'. She would have Tariq look into him, she thought, but from the tan on his skin he did not look like he spent many hours inside behind a screen. Nor did he really have a motive for wanting his father dead, she added, to herself.

Todd leant against the wall.

"So, if you're working to find out who tried to kill my dad, you're one of the spooks, right?"

Weighing up the benefits of telling him the truth against having to form another lie, and remember it, Ruth decided that the former was probably the better option.

"Not a proper one," she told him, truthfully. "I work on systems and technical analysis." Technically, that was Malcolm's old title, but it served well for her cover and the boy was not a computer whiz-kid anyway. If he only put tech kit together, she doubted he knew any more about systems analysis than she had picked up at GCHQ. "Why are you not at school?" she asked, suddenly realising why it had felt odd, to see a teenager at this time of day.

The boy shrugged.

"Dad didn't think there was much of a point to sending me back to school here. Said we were always going to be going abroad, as soon as everything was cleared up."

The fact that he had specified 'dad' made Ruth have to ask the next question.

"And your mum didn't think that you'd miss out on schoolwork, being away for a few months?"

Another shrug.

"She wanted to send me back to Harrow."

"She thought your father would stay in England, after the attack on the embassy?"

Todd raised bored eyes.

"I don't know... I guess she hoped so. She doesn't really like China. She cries a lot."

Ruth's mind began to tick faster, heading into overdrive.

The mother. Emily Elizabeth Wood, married to Torrance Wood in 1993, mother of Torrance 'Todd' Wood Jr, born in 1997. MI5 had checked her out, of course, when they ran detailed background checks on everyone surrounding the Consul. At that time, however, they had been looking for someone who had got to Wood through her – not considering her a suspect. The original investigation had rather ruled her out, due to the fact that she was with Wood when the attempts happened and that her son was injured in the blast. No mother would harm her child, Ruth mused, but, then again, Todd had not been seriously injured. The bomb at the embassy had been placed directly under the room where Torrance Wood took his meetings and well away from Todd's room. And if she was involved, Ruth thought, it would explain why the bombers had known all about the security guard shifts and layout of the building.

But what would be the motivation, Ruth wondered. Could it be an affair, like she had suspected all along? Was this Emily Wood's revenge against her husband? It would be an odd way of taking it, Ruth thought, without the other party ever aware that it was being wreaked. Then again, perhaps Emily had thought to free herself and her son, from her husband, without the scandal or cost of divorce. The Consul's death would be a way of ensuring that all of his wealth stayed within her grasp, to maintain the lifestyle she had become accustomed to.

"Does your mother see someone, for her depression?" Ruth asked Todd, as delicately as she could manage.

The boy shifted.

"I didn't say she's depressed. She just cries."

"So she is not seeing a doctor?"

"Not a shrink, if that's what you're meaning." The boy frowned. "Why do you want to know about my mum?"

"I'm sorry," Ruth shrugged, brushing the subject away as if it meant nothing. "It's just habit. We're taught to ask as many questions as we can get answered. I'm fairly new," she added, to ease his slightly accusing stare.

The new girl trick worked.

The boy's face shifted from accusation to mild interest.

"So you just started?"

"Yes."

"You're a bit old to have just finished Uni."

Ruth tried her best not to be offended by what was so bluntly the truth.

Clearing her throat, she nodded slightly.

"I had another job, before this one."

"Cool." A pause, then Todd frowned. "So, what do they train you to do, at spook school? Is it like the FBI academy?"

Ruth didn't quite have the heart to tell the boy there was no real spook school. Training was a complicated procedure which took place over months in a number of different locations. Training was specialised to what you would be doing, also, so she had not really had a chance to do any of what he would probably term as 'the fun stuff' – the stuff the US showed their Federal Agents doing in press videos about Quantico.

"Not really," she answered, with an apologetic smile. "It's all rather boring, to be honest."

"Do you have a gun?" the boy asked, next – the question that everyone seemed to ask, when they found out she worked for the Security Service.

Ruth shook her head.

"I'm not qualified to carry firearms."

"Are you wearing a wire, right now?"

"No. This is not an active operation, just a meet with your father."

"Right..." the boy licked his lower lip. "Is the guy downstairs in the long coat your boss?"

Ruth nodded, thoughts flickering over Harry.

"Yes."

"He looks like a bank manager, not a spy."

Ruth smiled a little. "I suppose he does."

"Is he, like, in charge of all the spooks?"

"Quite a few of us."

A moment's quiet, then;

"So... have you ever killed anyone?"

Ruth's heart seemed to tremor for an extra beat.

Had she ever killed anyone? The answer to that was yes, of course. She had killed. She had held a gun in her hands and pointed it at a man's chest and pulled the trigger. If she concentrated, even now, she could feel the cold plastic against her finger pads. She could smell the residue from the gunblast, feel the tight tension in her chest, feel the anger and fear all boiling together to form something that had felt so very much like hate at the time. She had killed a man. She had killed more, too, indirectly – through the intelligence she delivered and the security assessments she organised. She had held lives in her hands countless times and sometimes, just sometimes, those lives had ended there.

"I can't really tell you that," she answered, as spook-like an answer as the boy would expect.

"Is it classified?"

"Something like that, yes."

Todd opened his mouth to speak again, but their conversation was suddenly and sharply interrupted by footsteps coming from further down the hallway. As the teenager's gaze swivelled over Ruth's shoulder and the air of playful fun vanished from his face, Ruth turned on her heel to look too.

Emily Elizabeth Wood was walking towards them, her expression as taut as Ruth had ever seen an expression get. She was skinnier than Ruth had seen, in the background check photographs. The light pastel dress she was wearing hung off her frame and the collarbones and shoulders that emerged from either side of its cap sleeves were sharp and protruding from her skin. As she approached, her eyes flickered a couple of times between her son and Ruth, but they came to rest on Ruth solely as she drew level.

"I'm sorry," she started, a little shortly, coming to stop just on front of the analyst and protectively on front of her son. "Who are you?"

"I, um," Ruth cleared her throat, remembering who she was and that she was not at all the confident spook who she had been portraying to Todd. "I'm Rachael Hunter. I work for the government."

"You're one of William's people?" Mrs Wood asked, surprising Ruth that she knew the Home Secretary's name before Ruth remembered that Torrance Wood and the Home Secretary were friends, just like Torrance Wood and the Prime Minister were friends.

Rich people, Ruth thought bitterly. They were all interconnected.

"I work for the Security Services," she explained, watching Todd shift behind his mother. His expression was even more nervous, now.

"A spy?"

"A civil servant," Ruth corrected.

"And what do you want with my son?"

"I got a little turned around up here. Todd was just explaining how to get back to the meeting room, downstairs."

"I'd think it was fairly self explanatory," Mrs Wood muttered, a tad darkly.

"I'm not very good with directions."

Could she really be involved in all of this, Ruth wondered, as the woman across from her shifted her hands to her hips. She was certainly acting pretty odd, pretty protective. She could be hiding something. Then again, Ruth reasoned, she could just be reacting to the finding of a strange woman roaming her house and the fact that she had a room full of strangers downstairs, telling her husband they could no longer protect him. In the same situation, Ruth supposed she might react so, as well.

Giving the woman a nod then, she murmured something about having to rejoin the party anyway, and slipped off, bidding a wordless goodbye to Todd, who looked a little sorry to see her go. What a lonely existence, she thought, as she headed back down the stairs towards the ground floor and Harry. The poor kid was not allowed to go to school because his father was convinced he was going back. He could not see whatever friends he had, in Shanghai, because his mother was convinced they were staying. He was stuck in the middle of this battle of his parents – this battle which was going on behind the lines, behind what the Service had seen. But his mother was acting very strange, she repeated to herself, as she made it to the lower landing and followed the sound of voices to the meeting room. She would look into it when she got back to the Grid, Ruth told herself.

Another thing to figure out. Another lead to follow.

.


	24. Chapter 24

.

_Chapter 24 – Working_

.

The meeting, at Torrance Wood's London house, came to an end with Harry standing at the window to the living room, listening to Neilson's man, a young Officer called 'Adams', chatting enthusiastically to the polite Consul about his energy deals abroad. The young man must have aspirations in politics, Harry thought, eyes falling away with the boredom of it all. He had not seen a finer case of ass kissing since the last time Neilson and the Foreign Secretary had been in the same room.

To settle his stomach, he swivelled his gaze away from the politicians and onto Erin, as she stood a few feet away, scrolling through some list or another on her phone. His Section Chief was looking worried. Some other terror for them to field, no doubt, Harry thought. Thankfully, the lines on her forehead were fairly few. That was how you interpreted what was going on, with Erin. Each of his people had been different and Harry had learned to read them all. Adam had explained situations in metaphor, Ros numbered situations, on a scale of one to ten, Lucas had just wordlessly glared – the blankness of his eyes indicating how bad the intel was – but Erin's forehead creased. One line meant something mildly irritating. Two or three meant it was something a lot more sinister. If it was really bad, she would get a little line between her eyebrows as well.

There were only a couple of lines today, Harry noted. Probably not a world-shaking revelation, then. Something she could handle without him.

Turning away from Erin, then, he scanned the room for Ruth. His partner had slunk off earlier, as the meeting had come to a close, under pretexts of visiting the loo. He said 'pretext' because he had never known anyone to go off to the loo, in someone else's house, without asking first where it was. She just wanted a look around, he figured, not begrudging her the idea. With Wood and his wife in the room with them, it gave her a rather free run of the house. Perhaps something would jog a memory, or spark a realisation, as to what was going on in this strange case. Harry certainly hoped someone had a eureka moment before Wood headed back to China. As it stood, whomever had hired the assassin was still wandering free. Their TerraPharm link had run dry, all their other leads were dead in the water, but - case official cold and closed, or not - if Torrance Wood died it would still, technically, be on Harry's watch. And Harry hated when people died on his watch. He had enough trouble sleeping as it was.

Scanning the room again, the Section Head noticed that Wood's wife and two of the security detail had vacated the premises. The two men, most likely, to resume their posts around the building. A tiny flicker of unease crept up into him as he thought of Ruth being discovered snooping, but that unease vanished upon finding her walking back through the doorway. Safe. Undiscovered. He was about to make towards her when the Home Secretary, who had been standing a few feet away, near Erin, discussing something with his PA, moved to take up the position Harry had been about to take.

Ruth turned to Towers with a smile and a greeting.

Harry halted in his approach, a nip of jealousy burning, rich and illogical, in his belly.

He knew it was just talking and he knew that Ruth had no intentions towards anyone else, especially William Towers – though they had spent more time together of late – but he could not help but react a little possessively. He was a terrible at that. He had always been terrible at that. In every relationship he had ever been in, his partners had complained that he could be a right jealous prick at times. It must all boil down to some deep-seated insecurity on his part, Harry thought, some insecurity even deeper than he felt about himself and Ruth; (that he was not young enough, strong enough, brave enough to fight for her should someone else come along). All such insecurities were silly, of course, Harry knew that. They were borderline ridiculous, in fact, but that did not stop the emotion from rising up within him. Watching his analyst laugh at something Towers had said, he still felt the slight urge to walk over and punch the older man in the face.

Across the room, Ruth tossed her hair back and Harry felt his forehead tense slightly. It was a flirty little thing that she had never really done with him, despite all the moments they had shared over the years. Harry had seen her doing it with a few others; with Zafar Younis, in the very first few weeks he had worked there, with a couple of 'old friends' from GCHQ, with a politician at a function they had attended last year. She was his girl now, though, he told himself, watching Ruth's smile grow and fade to the waves of conversation. His girl. Just being friendly because it made the conversation easier.

He would look like a jealous prick if he went over, now, and interrupted them, Harry thought.

He would, but he could not find it within himself to care.

Turning away from Wood, Neilson's man and another who had come to join them, Harry walked past Erin, nodding to her when she asked if it was time to leave, and made his way over to Ruth's side. Appearing at her elbow, he smiled wanly at the Home Secretary across the way.

"All taken care of?" Towers asked, turning to him.

"Everything that can be done," Harry assured, managing – he thought – to keep his voice from being cool.

Ruth stirred at his shoulder.

He looked down at her.

"Anything else you can think of?" he asked.

She shook her head, blue eyes slightly hesitant.

Harry noticed that, whatever conversation his analyst and his boss had been having, before he joined them, had been well and truly shut down now that he was within earshot. Another flicker of nerves ran through him, along with a sick wave of irrational dislike, towards Towers. It was stupid, he knew, because the man was not only his superior but one of the most amiable Home Secretary's that Harry had had the fortune to work with. They got on well together, until Ruth came into the equation. He had to get a handle on this, Harry told himself, either that or shut Ruth well away from the Home Office at all times.

He could to that, he reasoned, watching Towers look back around the room. Ruth's job title meant that she was usually restricted to the Grid. He could just assign any Government liaising to another analyst on the team – citing workload problems – and refuse any of Towers' future requests to borrow her. Sabotage, muttered a little voice in the back of his head – back where his conscience used to reside – this was nasty, dirty sabotage, but it felt so good to have a little plan in mind. Keep Ruth away from Towers. Keep Towers away from Ruth. Jealousy issues sorted.

It was a marvellous plan.

Giving Towers a short smile, he told him that they would have to make a move. Things to do before the end of the day. People to terrorise.

Towers graciously bid him farewell, before turning to Ruth and adding;

"I'll hear from you by the end of the month, then?"

She nodded, piquing Harry's interest as to their previous conversation even more.

"Yes, Home Secretary."

Towers gave Harry one last bob of the head then turned and walked over to where the Consul was still fielding Richard Neilson's young upstart officer.

Harry turned to Ruth.

"By the end of the month?" he asked, unable to stop himself. He was, after all, still her boss and still allowed to ask questions about work without being taken for being nosy. Might as well take advantage of that fact. "What does he want?"

Ruth gave a slightly uneasy half-laugh.

"Just something I was doing for him, for the Wood case."

"What thing?" Harry frowned. "He does realise you have a job to do, doesn't he? He cannot just waltz in and monopolise your time whenever he sees fit?"

"Technically he can, Harry," Ruth pointed out, with just a hint of a sparkle in her eyes this time, a little more surety in her voice. "He _is_ your boss too."

Harry gave her a reproachful look.

"His requests have to come through me," he told her, firmly. "I have to know what my own staff are doing."

"You do know, Harry," Ruth reassured him. "It was in that report you signed off, last week, after you loaned me out for the day."

"...right."

Harry swallowed.

His lover was watching him almost fondly, now, as if tickled by the situation. She probably knew that his problem with this request was not strictly professionally motivated, Harry thought, feeling very slightly under the spotlight. She could read the little signs in his face as well as he could read hers. She had known him well and for many years. So, it stood to reason that she could tell when he was being a jealous prick rather than a concerned boss. And, for now at least, it seemed to amuse her.

Well, the novelty of him being jealous over her would wear off soon, Harry thought bitterly, it always did. In the beginning, they were flattered but soon enough they started to resent him for it. And then it came between them. And then his partner always left...

Shaking himself, he pushed on back into conversation.

"I'm sorry, I completely forgot about that," he explained himself.

"You have a lot on your plate."

She sounded so understanding, so softly Ruth, that all the insecurity and worry melted away.

She had known him for years. They had known each other for years. She was in this – completely, wholly, fully – and he had to accept that or they would never make it.

"Sorry," he apologised, lamely.

"Don't worry about it," Ruth murmured back and smiled.

A semi-awkward moment passed.

"So," Harry asked, eventually, "did you find anything out, whilst slinking around the Consul's property?"

He half expected Ruth's cheeks to pink, but apparently that was reserved for less appropriate situations than being caught out intruding on other people's property.

"I might have," she answered, a little cautiously. "I'll tell you later," she added, her eyes slipping over his shoulder to where Harry suddenly heard Erin approaching, heels clunking against the carpet.

The pair of them turned to face the Section Chief.

"Something afoot?" Harry asked her, with mild trepidation.

There were three lines across Erin's forehead and the faintest indentation of a shadow between her eyes. Nothing good, then.

As expected, she nodded.

"Bradford is coming to a head," she told him, her tone slightly worried. "Calum missed his last check-in and one of the backup team tells us it looks like something is going down at headquarters. We don't know what yet because they are in a holding pattern and can't seem to re-establish contact with Calum, on point."

Fantastic, Harry thought, panic rushing through him. Just when everything was tidying up on the Wood case, Calum's Bradford operation had to blow sky-high. Well, he forcibly reminded himself, they did not know that yet. They did not know anything yet, in fact, and, intelligence being the most important part of an intelligence operation, they would do well to figure out what was going on before they over-reacted. After all, Harry needed to know whether or not Calum was in trouble – or whether his being out of contact might just be because he could not find time to do so safely without breaking his cover – before even thinking of sending someone in. They did not want to break cover on a two week long operation for nothing. They needed to gather as much information as to what was going on as they were able, collate it, interpret it, and make an informed decision. And to do that, they needed people on the ground.

"Have Calum's backup team move closer," Harry told Erin, calmly, "and get Dimitri up there. Whatever's happening, I want someone to be able to coordinate from the outside and keep a direct link open with the Grid. I take it none of Calum's inside people inside are contactable?" he asked.

Erin shook her head.

"No, but we made it that way. We wanted Calum to be the only contact to the two assets. We supposed it might instil greater trust."

"Whose clever idea was that?" Harry growled, rubbing his forehead with the pads of his fingers.

"Yours, sir," Erin responded, calmly.

"Bugger." He hated when that happened. "Right," he sighed, gathering himself, then gave a firm nod. "Call and get Dimitri up there, have Tariq do a run-down on everything we have, and we'll see what else we can figure out once we're back on the Grid. I'll call the car around," he told the two women, pulling his phone from his pocket. "Two minutes."

As he walked away, his eyes connected once more with Ruth's and he melted a little to see how concerned she looked for their colleague. She and Calum were close, Harry knew that. It happened with two team members who spent more time together than the rest. He understood why, of course, and that it was a natural reaction, but it always made situations like this harder. When a colleague is in danger, you worry but you are still able to objectively carry out your job. When a friend is in danger, on the other hand, emotions become involved.

Ruth's eyes held his, as Harry lifted the phone to his ear and, for a moment, he found himself trying to telepathically send reassuring thoughts her way. Then, the driver picked up on the other end of the phone line and his attention became otherwise engaged.

"Harry Pearce. Yes, come around the back again, please. No point in us all parading past the press."

Glancing back at Ruth, he saw that she had turned to Erin and they were already chatting in a rushed undertone as they made their way to the door.

It was going to be a long afternoon.

.

It was a long afternoon.

As it turned out, Calum was alive and well and thriving in the racist criminal underworld of Northern England. His non-contact, as it turned out, had been down to faulty equipment and a complete lack of common sense. The operation was continuing as planned. Indeed, there was even good news to be gained from all of it. As Calum explained to Harry, when he called at six o' clock that evening, the young man in charge of the white supremist group had called a meeting of his closest and meanest friends to discuss a campaign against the 'colonising' migrant communities on their doorstep. Their hatred, it seemed, had become directed at a particular sub-group of the Pakistani community, in Frizinghall. Milligan was planning a series of attacks, to destabilise their community and start what he termed as a 'race war'.

"He makes out that he's a scientist – thinks he's Madison fucking Grant – but his brand of insanity is far more common," Calum ranted down the phone, sounding fed up and stressed. "He is a straightforward, disenfranchised racist. A fair few IQ points higher up than his father, I'll give him that, but having a stupid father by comparison does not a genius make. He's volatile," Harry's officer warned him, heaving a heavy sigh, "and he's gearing up for something stupid because he wholeheartedly believes he is doing the right thing. He says he will give his life if he has to, to make the country listen, and I think he's telling the truth."

It was the worst sort of adversary, thought Harry, as he gave his officer advice on how to proceed down the phone. The sort who were not only willing to kill, for their cause, but to die for it. They were unstoppable, given the right funding and inclination and Harry knew – whatever the Government brayed, whatever the polls read or spokespeople insisted – that a recession brought out the xenophobia in a large proportion of the population. In times of plenty, there was ample to share and people did not begrudge it but, when times grew tighter, people started to look for a place to apportion blame. And they found it in crime statistics.

Bradford had the highest population of British Asians in all of the North and the crime rates were significantly higher than the national average. Fifty percent of unemployed, in the town, were from minority groups. It had the highest level of gun violence in the country and was in the top five for burglary, rape and assault. All of this information, of course, had to be taken alongside the information that most of the centre of the town and forty-odd percent of the entire Bradford district, were among the most deprived in the country. It would not have mattered a toss, thought Harry, if the population had been white, or black, or purple or rainbow-coloured – the result would be the same. Poverty, recession, want, need, deprivation and unemployment. People reacted. It was as simple as that.

As Calum sighed down the phone that he'd better go – he was due back under Milligan's watchful eye in half an hour and he needed a shit, shower and shave before then – Harry warned the younger man not to get too invested, not to let emotions get in the way. Milligan needed him, now, because Calum had professed a desire to be involved in the campaign in a hands-on capacity and Milligan needed willing volunteers to go out and do his dirty work for him. But the moment he got an inkling of what Calum truly was, the moment he became a threat and not a useful asset, Calum would disappear as quickly as one of his assets had, a few days ago.

"I'll keep an eye on it, boss," the younger spook replied, wearily, "but my people are good. They have a handle on everyone and everything that is going down, in here. I'm well informed."

Harry hoped it was the truth. He knew from experience, however, that it was easy to think you were well informed, right up until the point where the veil was lifted from your eyes. Then, suddenly, you realised that you were not well informed and that your enemy knew more than you thought – suddenly, you realised that you were up to your testicles in petrol with some manic Irishman playing with a lighter, over your shoulder, and there was very little chance of getting out of alive.

Finishing his phone call, he set down the phone and just sat there, for a moment, contemplating the surface of his desk.

His in-tray was miraculously clear, tonight. The only thing in it was something that he could not do until tomorrow and the threat assessments which usually flocked his way around this time of night seemed, by some miracle, to be taking the day off. The mid-January lull, he thought, with a mild sense of relief. Only personal vendettas were carried out in mid-January, from Harry's previous experience. That and Northern Irish business. The rest of the country was far too caught up in the January blues to be feeling up to any nonsense.

Looking up, he caught sight of Ruth crossing the Grid and sitting back down at her desk. She looked particularly beautiful, tonight, for some reason. Perhaps it was simply seeing her back where she belonged. On the Grid, not out in the Home Office, or the field. Here. With him. This was their place, he thought, watching her play with her hair as she flicked through the last few pages of some report. They were made here. They made this place.

They were the old hands, now, Harry supposed. He had heard Calum Reid once referred, rather jokingly, to them as mama bear and papa bear, but there was an element of truth to them being parental figures on the Grid. Apart from Calum, who was only three or four years short of Ruth, the rest were a good decade younger than Harry's analyst – and all of them were a good two decades younger than Harry. He and Ruth held seniority, then, not only in rank and years on the job, but in life experience. Sometimes, they would glance at one another, mid some report, mid some quarrel between Erin and Dimitri, or Erin and Calum, or Erin and Tariq, and he would feel that insight they shared that made them separate from the others.

They were special. This was their place.

And it soothed Harry to know that.

Outside, in their place, Ruth was frowning, mid-way down her report. The tip of her pen made its way to her mouth and she pressed the end of it into her lower lip, making it redden a touch. Harry could not help but smile and, almost as soon as he did – as if by some strange telepathy – Ruth seemed to know. Her eyes lifted from the report and onto his, through the glass. The frown that had delicately lined her forehead flashed away and was replaced by a smile. For him.

Meeting her eyes, Harry inclined his head, beckoning her through. The communication may have been wordless, but Ruth seemed to know, right away, that he did not want her through to talk about work. Perhaps it was the lightness in his eyes, Harry thought, or perhaps she had just sussed him out completely and he could no longer keep anything back. Perhaps she could read his soul, if she chose to. Either way, he nodded again, the movement accompanied, this time, with a hopeful smile.

Ruth's eyes sparkled and she held up three fingers then, much to Harry's frustration, she turned her attentions back down to the report on her desk.

Three minutes, she said.

Three minutes was too long.

Harry reached over and pulled the phone to his ear, punching in her extension.

She picked up on the second ring, giving him a reproachful look, through the glass.

"I'll be done in just a moment."

"I won't keep you long. I just wanted to ask you to dinner."

A pause.

Harry saw Ruth's face shift, a strange array of expressions flickering over it. First came unease, then realisation that this was okay, then hesitation as she checked that no one could overhear them, then relaxation as she confirmed that fact, then pleasure, at his question. The destination relieved Harry somewhat, who had started to worry that he had maybe pushed it a little far, for Grid-based interaction. She was skittish, his lover, after all.

"Dinner?" she asked, softly. "As in out?"

"Out. Chairs and a table and everything." Harry dithered over offering White Burgundy and making a joke on the subject of their previous date, then held himself back. They were growing far more comfortable, but he did not want to set back their marvellous growth by some stupidly timed joke. "What do you think?" he asked, instead, eager for a response.

Ruth gave a soft exhale of a laugh.

"I think that, for someone who has a reputation for cold and calculating patience," she replied, warm tone betraying the intended bite of her comment, "you are somewhat impetuous, in person."

"Indeed. And what do you say, about dinner?" he asked, ignoring her quip.

A silence.

They watched each other for a few seconds, through the glass, and then Ruth looked back down again, flicking on through the report.

"I don't know. I'm very busy."

Harry smiled. He knew for a fact she was not busy. She had nothing on her system. The files she was looking through were old and attached to the Consul Wood case – the case they had as good as closed that afternoon. Ruth had some theory that the wife was behind it all, wreaking revenge for some sordid affair. While Harry did not particularly think it was likely, he had given her Tariq for twenty-four hours, barring anything else coming up that needed his attentions, to have a look at the idea. He was currently running image-recognition software on the MSS CCTV tapes around the Shanghai embassy, checking, this time, for comings and goings of family members rather than of strangers lurking (with bombs and/or intent). Ruth, then, was not busy on work business. And personal vendettas could pause, for dinner.

"You're in-tray is empty," he pointed out.

"There is more to me than an in-tray," Ruth lilted, softly, flicking over to the back page of her report and scrolling down it with delicious concentration.

"You can't be busy," Harry stressed, after a moment or two had passed. "Even I'm not busy, this evening."

She paused in her reading and an eyebrow raised.

"If you look carefully around you, _Sir_ Harry," she told him, her tone halfway between amused and indignant, "you might find that you are not actually the only one keeping the country running. While your desk might be clear," she continued, "all we little people still must scurry around, ferreting out bits of information to feed you."

A pause.

"I've always thought of your scurrying as more mouse-like than ferret-like," he told her, playfully.

She gave a very muffled laugh, down the line, and glanced minutely up at him, before forcing her eyes back down to the paper.

"Okay. I'm not busy, but I have three more pages to read of this and I'd really like to finish it first before-," she began, then stopped herself and overrode with, "-you know, I'm not entirely sure why I'm apologising for this. I'd be done, by now, if you'd let me get on with it."

"And I'd have left you to it, if you'd give me an answer," Harry retorted, amiably.

"And how am I supposed to think dinner through when my mind is occupied with all of this?"

"You multi-task best under pressure, Evershed, it's your most valuable trait."

"Oh, is it really?" she asked, with a smile.

"Yes," Harry responded, with absolute surety. "That and your eyes."

Her smile twitched again and she sighed, leaning back in her chair.

"Well, okay then."

Flattery would get him anywhere. Harry had always known his mother was lying.

"Okay... what?" he pressed, just to be sure.

"You know what," Ruth replied, reproachfully. "I'd like to do dinner." Then, glancing around to check that Erin was away from her desk and no one else was within earshot, she added, "but I'm not an easy woman to please, you know. You'll have to pull out all the stops."

"Don't I know it."

A smile.

"Pick me up at half seven?"

"Seven."

"Half seven."

"Quarter past seven?"

"Half seven."

"Twenty past-,"

"-Harry..."

"I'll see you at seven," he told her, eyes roving over her one last time before he forced himself to stand from his seat and start looking about himself for his personal effects. "And I'm picking you up from home so you'd better be heading back there soon."

"As soon as I'm done with this," she assured him.

"Okay..."

A moment passed as he slipped his keys into his pockets and leant, one hand on the desk, not quite daring to look up through the glass at her.

He was having one of those stupidly sentimental moments, where he felt overpoweringly glad they had made it, and anyone watching would be able to see the boundless love in his eyes. Eight years, he thought, examining the grain of the wood on top of his desk. The best part of a decade and they had finally managed to get here, unharmed for the most part, a little damaged, admittedly, but still very much human and very much in love. Why ever it was that she loved him, or they had both survived, Harry did not know but the important of 'why' seemed to pale away in these moments – along with any insufficiencies he felt, in himself. They had made it.

"I'll see you later," he told her softly then, pausing only for a second (out of habitual nerves) added, "love you."

A moment passed. He heard her breathe, in then out, a little heavier than normal. Chancing a look up, he saw that Erin had returned to her desk and that she was in too close proximity for his lover to risk openly replying. Lowering his eyes back down to the table, then he murmured a soft goodbye down the line and lowered the phone back to its cradle. It clicked as it fell back into place.

Out on the Grid, Ruth kept her handset pressed against her ear for a moment longer, then she lowered it too. She did not chance a look over at him for another few seconds, but when she did the understanding in her eyes made him that little bit more sure of them.

He loved her. She knew. They were making it, after all that time. They were working.

Gathering his coat from the hook on the back of the door, Harry flicked the lights off and locked the office, before heading out towards the night. As he crossed the Grid, he had to try very hard not to grin or look at her. Or shout out, in joyful victory.

.


	25. Chapter 25

.

_Chapter 25 – From Embers_

.

Dinner was wonderful. From her first experience of dating Harry, Ruth had decided that her boss must have either blackmail material on half of London's elite or a very hefty paycheck, considering the luxury to which he treated her. Having since ruled out the latter of her suppositions (by a sneaky look at his personnel file) Ruth was left to marvel at what spectacular material he must have to manage this repeat performance. It had to be damning.

Despite not having reservations and despite the Michelin star restaurant being fully booked up for two weeks, they were quietly 'squeezed' in, after Harry gave his name, to a comfortable little table at the back of the room. The owner, himself, greeted Harry with a handshake and a slightly wary expression as he assured him that the specials tonight were excellent. The waiters, Ruth noticed, all seemed to be more attentive than they were to the other customers. There was definitely something afoot. When she asked Harry how exactly why they were being treated like royalty, however, her mysterious lover just gave her an innocently boyish smile and said 'charm'.

While charm played its part, Ruth doubted it was the whole reason. Charm would suffice as an excuse for now, however. After all, it was impolite to look the gift horse in the mouth. So, she just relaxed and let her companion help her to her seat, pour her a drink and gently lead the conversation around. He was a wonderful dinner date, really, she thought as she watched him across the table. It was, after all, a case of playing a part and spies were generally very good at that. Harry Pearce, Section D, could become Harry, the charming dinner date, just as easily as he became Harry, cool and effective killer. He could be anything he wanted to be. He certainly fit in here, thought Ruth, looking about herself – so much better than she did. The restaurant was hardly a flashy one, in fact, it was almost understated in its opulence, but it was definitely expensive and exclusive. And Harry just seemed to fit.

She was getting used to it, though. The daunted feeling which she had felt upon him first leading her through the front door, was beginning to fade. His gentle ways had helped with that. He was so careful with her, so surprisingly thoughtful as they sat, and talked, and ordered and ate. He told anecdotes and laughed at her jokes and teased her, for not being adventurous with her food choices. In return, he made small innuendo about being adventurous and told him off for buying expensive wine.

"I get to do this, now," he defended himself, to the reprimand. "I get to buy things for you, whenever I feel like it, and you, in turn, get to do anything you like with me." He raised his glass. "That is what being in a symbiotic relationship is all about."

"Not so symbiotic," Ruth pointed out, drinking a sip of her own wine and smiling at him over the rim. "The arrangement seems to swing more to my benefit than it does to yours."

Harry just shook his head with that secret smile he sometimes wore.

"Not true," he told her softly. "Not even close."

They drank and ate and discussed things quietly between themselves, dithering between courses and playing over topics that they had played over many a time. They talked about the past and laughed, for once. They talked about work and their leads all flatlining, and frowned a little. They talked about themselves and soothed the feeling in the air back to pleasant, then finally conversation slipped to Graham and what Harry was going to do about the loan.

Giving a sigh, Ruth's lover told her that he thought he might go through with it. Whatever feelings Ruth had, about the dangerous nature of giving that amount of money to an ex-drug addict, who would happily see him swing, Graham was his son and Harry could not let a chance to be back in his life slip past. She agreed, softly, watching the softness in his eyes as he talked of his children, thinking that his being a father was probably what saved his humanity, all those years ago – what held him back from becoming completely absorbed and lost inside his work. Sure, over the years he had made poor choices. He had been reticent to compromise and so he had missed out on what fatherhood had truly to offer. But, she thought, he had loved in the same manner in which he did all things – passionately and with purpose. It was a little bittersweet to see that it was only now, with years on his side, he was finally mature enough to be a father. Now, when all Graham wanted was money and not love.

"I suppose it is a desperate grasp at a second chance," Harry sighed, as they pondered over the subject. His eyes were focussed down, on the table, his fingers toying with the stem of his wine glass, helplessly lost in the depth of their conversation. "I often wish he was just a child again and I could start all over."

"Nobody gets to start over," Ruth pointed out, "but, sometimes, if we're really lucky, we get to move on from the past."

Harry gave a soft noise of disbelief.

"It happens," Ruth insisted, tilting her head to catch his downcast gaze. "Look at us, after all."

A sad little smile pulled at her lips as she thought of their first date – how little they knew each other and how already invested she was in their future. On that night, in that moment, she would have given her life to him. She would have given everything. It was blind puppy-love, but it had been so very, very potent. As morning dawned and reality clawed, however, she had spooked. As her colleagues joked and teased and, though it had all been in good nature, it had not seemed so, at the time. Ruth had withdrawn fully and convinced herself that her future was more important than risking it on some heart-based fling. But heart-based was sometimes not stupid, she had learned over the years, as the emotions inside her failed to fade. Sometimes that first feeling you have towards someone, that first emotional connection, is right. Sometimes you need to trust your gut. Sometimes you need to be brave.

"We are very lucky," Harry agreed, softly, finally meeting her gaze. "Not everyone gets the chance or mutual inclination to move on, from the past. It is very rare."

"Yes," she nodded, "but when something unlikely happens it doesn't mean it should be dismissed because it is unlikely. It should be fought for. It should be embraced."

There was a brief pause, while Harry played with his glass a little more.

"You know," he eventually sighed, "if I was a lesser man, I would accuse you of being changeable, Miss Evershed. Only the other night you were telling me to _temper_ my enthusiasm – not to embrace it all too readily."

Ruth let out a little laugh.

How easily he misunderstood a situation.

"I don't offer advice, Harry," she smiled, gently. "I'm just the sounding board."

Her lover frowned, so she took a sip of her wine and elaborated.

"It's how we work. You talk at me. I offer information and the opposing argument. You talk some more and then you weigh everything up and make an informed decision." She shrugged. "It's what we have always done."

The comprehension dawning across his face was beautiful. It seemed to catch in his eyes and light him up entirely. Ruth watched with interest as he played this new information over in his mind, doing exactly what she had told him he would do – weighing it up, making a decision on what it meant. Then, slowly and carefully, forming a response.

"It is what we've always done _at work_," he pointed out, looking slightly worried, as he said it – as though she would suddenly come to the conclusion, from his words, that they only worked in an operational capacity and needed to be ended as quickly as possible. "When we're at home-," he began,

Ruth interrupted, with a soft voice.

"At work, at home..." she smiled. "Whatever we become, I'll always be the analyst, too. It is where we started and that is important. It's part of who we are."

Harry watched her, for a moment, with endless eyes. Then he nodded.

"I know that."

They sat and drank their wine and waited for a few minutes as their deserts were brought and they tasted them. True to the rest of the meal, they were delicious and the perfunctory comments were exchanged about texture and taste and the calorific content of cream (and Harry's lack of need of any more calorific content). Ruth happily devoured hers, being uncharacteristically hungry, while her lover picked his way gently through his, spending most of his attention on watching her eat.

After their comfortable silence had stretched on for a couple of minutes, Harry said, softly,

"Do you know, the first time I asked you out to dinner, I had not even considered that my being your boss would be a problem?"

Ruth halted, stirring cream around the periphery of her plate.

A small frown creased her forehead.

Harry was astoundingly backwards in certain situations but she could not imagine that even he could perceive his being her boss as not being a potential hazard to starting a relationship. There were pitfalls too numerous to name. They could fail at the personal because she could not get over what he was during the day. Their personal relationship could have detracted from their working one and made rank and hierarchy difficult to manage. There were infinite ways that his being her boss could have (and still could, Ruth forced herself to remember) be problematic. As a man who did risk assessment for a living, Harry could not possibly have overlooked them.

"You cannot be serious," she eventually stated, bluntly, focussing her attention on his face again and setting down her desert spoon.

Harry gave a rich laugh, all the tension of their previous conversation draining from his face.

"I am, I assure you."

Ruth raised an eyebrow.

"So, you thought that would all go swimmingly, did you? No clashes of interest, or emotional compromise?"

"Well, initially, I thought that, if we could not work and play together – so to speak – then I would just find another analyst and you could transfer to another department."

Ruth let out an indignant puff of air.

"Well its nice to feel essential!"

Harry watched her, closely, with the hint of a smile playing around the left corner of his lips.

"Initially," he repeated, slowly. "And ill advisedly."

A long few seconds passed.

Ruth watched impatiently.

Finally, Harry began to speak again.

"Then," he sighed, "I took you to dinner and we started talking and I realised, about halfway through starters, that I could not hope to find someone who fit your job as well as you – nor someone who fit me as well as you – and I had actually put myself in a bit of a tight spot." He shifted in his chair, eyes deep and focussed solely on her. "If you had excelled at either the professional and professional, exclusively, I could have steered us towards one relationship or the other but, as it turned out, you were far too good at both. You were brilliant, even. Calm and funny and perilously intelligent. I realised I had shot myself in the foot by asking you to diner because now I could not possibly think of you in a strictly platonic way again. Although," he granted, "I suppose, I had not been thinking of your strictly platonically for quite some time, at this point."

"Good to know..." Ruth said, very softly.

Harry smiled, a little bashfully, at that one.

"Anyway," he cleared his throat, "for about ten minutes, I tried very hard to let conversation run flat and not to let myself enjoy the dinner, because I was hoping how well we worked together was just initial spark and that we could somehow go back to being slightly awkward workmates. That way," he explained, "I wouldn't have to worry about having to choose between keeping you in my life professionally and keeping you in it personally. Then, you said something completely innocuous..." Harry told her, with a far-off look in his eyes, "...you made some silly, incredibly sharp little comment about Chaucer... and I realised that if I didn't have you I was going to die."

"That's a tad dramatic, is it not?" Ruth asked, through a tight chest.

"Dramatic, but it was how I felt," Harry admitted, looking back over at her.

Ruth swallowed, watching him with rapt attention.

Her heart was thundering, slightly, in her chest. Her heartbeat was pulsing heavy in her ears. She had expected to talk of Graham, tonight. She had expected to talk of work and their past and even their previous dinner date, (after all, they had only been for two), but not like this. Harry was not an open person. He did not share deeply emotional experiences. This was new and completely unheard of, in their short relationship together, and it was nearly as terrifying as when he had stood on that rooftop and given her that ultimatum; love or nothing.

"I resolved to take you home," Harry continued, with slightly sheepish eyes, for the first time since he had started to explain their evening together. "I thought I could."

Ruth was not sure whether to feel slightly offended, or relieved that she had not misinterpreted the way he was watching her, for the latter half of their dinner together. She had read it in him, then, and so hoped that it was true – hoped and feared, actually. While Harry had been going through his train of worries, she had been doing the same. She had run hot and cold all evening, caught between terrified of moving closer and terrified of missing out on such an opportunity. Harry Pearce. Asking her to dinner. Harry Pearce, watching her with softly hungry eyes.

"I planned to seduce you, when I gave you a lift home."

"But you didn't," Ruth pointed out, gripping the stem of her wine glass so tightly she could feel it press into the bone of her finger. "As close as you came was the front door..."

"Where I almost kissed you,"

"Yes," she smiled, despite the nerves over talking about it. They had been so close, their faces just inches apart, the scent of each other and their combined want heavy in the air. If he had leant forwards and kissed her, Ruth would have invited him in. She would have drawn him to her and there would not have been a thing on heaven or on earth which could have pulled them apart. They were both lust-drunk and heady with their crush. Ruth could remember his hand ghosting over her side, the closeness of him and the anticipation, and then the surge of disappointment when he had nipped in to kiss her cheek chastely instead. "I remember," she told him, marvelling at how detailed the memory was, even then.

"I can remember thinking how perfect we would feel together,"

Ruth blushed, remembering the same, and nodded.

"But... I stopped."

She frowned. "Why?"

She had always wondered why. It had been one of her most pondered-over questions, in the aftermath of their short encounter. She had tortured herself over it for weeks, wondering if she did something wrong, feeling both relieved and heart-wrenchingly disappointed that it had not happened, but never knowing why.

Harry fixed her with a strange gaze, looking a little shy.

"Because, as I was musing over how perfect we would feel together," he began, hesitantly, "I suddenly realised that I didn't just want to taste you as a passing distraction. I realised that this little love that I was feeling – a love I thought was just attraction, lust, opportunity and a bit of mid-life crisis – was actually something much more than that. It blindsighted me completely," he admitted. "I realised that I did not just want a relationship with you, which may fall apart in a few months time, but-what's-the-difference. I realised that I was falling in love with you and wanted a future together. And _then_ I realised that my being your boss was going to be a problem."

Only then... how very Harry.

How very Harry all of it was, Ruth thought, watching him watch her with eyes so sincere. He was so sudden and impulsive where emotion was concerned – exactly the opposite of how he treated cold fact. In the meeting room, in the field, on the Grid, he was level headed and stoic as a stone. Throw a bit of emotion into the mix, however, a bit of true human interaction, and his resolve crumbled.

"I did not want you as my analyst," he continued, across from her. "Or, rather, I did, but not _just_ as my analyst. Nor did I simply want you as my lover. I wanted both and more. I wanted everything, but I had no plan for everything, I had no idea how to tell you how I felt – that I had never felt this close, this perfect, with anyone – and I was worried that 'we' meant more to me than it did to you. So," he sighed, long and heavy, "I decided to give myself time to work it out. I stepped away."

"And left me on my doorstep alone," Ruth finished.

A moment passed.

"Do you forgive me, for that?" he asked her, softly.

Ruth nodded.

"It took me a while, though," she added, a little sheepishly.

"It took a long time to forgive myself," Harry admitted. "There were a couple of nights when I could have hit myself in the face for walking away, in pursuit of something more – nights where I convinced myself that we could have worked it out, even if we had started as a one night stand."

A little smile twitched Ruth's lips at that thought.

She had shared it, often enough, but even as she had thought it she had known it was not true.

"We wouldn't have made it," she told him.

"I know,"

"Oliver Mace would have used me to rip you to shreds."

"He did anyway," Harry pointed out, "but I get your point. We had no solid foundation. They would have torn us apart and we would have had nothing to fall back on."

Ruth fingered the stem of her glass, thinking of the foundation they had, now; years of companionship, of friendship, rock hard and built of both victory and defeat. They worked, now, because they understood each other fully. They had seen the worst and best of each other and accepted it. If they had fallen into bed that night, in their early flush of love, they would have fallen away just as quickly. Neither had been keen on compromise, at the time. Things were different, now. At least, Ruth hoped they were.

The other evening, when they had been lying in bed, talking around the subject of his eventual retirement, Harry had said that he would miss working with her but their being together at work no longer seemed so important to him as it did, in the past. It had only seemed important, at the time, he said, because they had nothing else to base their interactions on. Now he was allowed to know her in a private life, he had said, stroking along the curve of her shoulder, he was a little less terrified about the day the Service booted him out the door. He had always hated the idea of losing her.

Ruth had just lain beside him and hoped that sentiment still rang true when applied to her leaving the Service, rather than him. It would make her decision, over what to answer the Home Secretary, that much easier. She was almost sure what she wanted to say, but she did not know – not quite – how Harry would take it and that scared the living daylights out of her. She could not lose him. He meant everything to her. If he did not want her to leave, it could cause a fraction line, down their fragile new relationship.

But they were built on solid foundations, she reminded herself. Things were different, now.

.

Sitting across from Harry, at the table, discussing the dual nature of their personal and professional relationships would, perhaps, would have been the perfect time to bring up her job offer, but Ruth did not bring up her job offer. Instead, pushing her glass gently aside, she slipped her hand across the table and, entwining her fingers with his, asked Harry if they could go home. He said yes, asked for the bill and paid – much against her insistence to split it and to a little good-natured bickering on the way out of the restaurant.

They took a taxi home, Harry having learned long ago not to trust his driver with any intimate knowledge of his personal life, and spent most of the ride sliding their fingers over one another's, in the back seat of the car – an small, extended sort of foreplay which lasted up until they arrived back outside Harry's townhouse. There, stepping out into the cold night air, Ruth paid for the taxi before Harry could object and, as it drove away, they turned back to each other with an air of expectation.

"I take it you won't leave me standing on your doorstep?" she asked, a little breathlessly.

"Only if you mention it again," he warned back, nudging her back until her tight-clad legs brushed against the freezing stone of his garden wall and making her squeak slightly in surprise and mutter his name.

"And here I was thinking that knights were all gentlemen," she complained, as he brushed his lips against the rise of her cheekbone.

Harry laughed, low and warm.

Ruth's lips parted, to form another indignant reply, but failed, right away, as he leant into her and kissed her firmly on the lips. His skin was warm, so deliciously warm after the sting of the cold air, and she could not help but fall into him. They were good at kissing, she thought, hazily through the pleasure. They were so good at this part. They were getting incredibly good at other things too, but Ruth hoped that this little game would never become superfluous, or neglected. It was far too wonderful for that.

Harry seemed to enjoy it every bit as she did. He enjoyed it with her legs against the garden wall, he enjoyed it as he clicked open the gate and nudged her through, he even enjoyed it as he led her up the garden path, walking backwards a few steps between embraces. As they stepped close enough to the house to set off the automatic lights, they both paused, for a moment, startled by the illumination, then their eyes adjusted and they picked out each other again, leaning into kiss again.

Their lips were just brushing, when an obnoxious cough from the porch caused both of them to jump and whip around in fright.

"Apologies," came an unfamiliar voice. "I don't mean to interrupt but if this goes on any longer I might actually vomit."

The voice had emanated from a young man sitting on the lowest step to the house. As her eyes swept over him, Ruth felt a strange feeling of déjà vu. The young man – and he was fairly young, he could not have been more than thirty – looked familiar but, at the same time, was obviously a stranger. Ruth was almost one hundred percent sure that she had never met him in her life, but then there was something about him... something about his wirey build and shaggy blonde hair, and those eyes... She frowned. Eyes just like-,

She turned to Harry.

"Graham?" she asked, softly.

Harry nodded, jaw tightening.

"What are you doing here?" he asked his son, in a tone so antagonistic that Ruth could only wonder why it had taken them nearly ten years to get back into contact. "I said I'd call you later."

"Looks like you would have been too busy," Graham replied, lightly, giving a groan as he pulled himself to his feet and dusted off the back of his trousers. He was in a short black coat with what looked like work clothes underneath. With only the collar of his shirt giving any other colour than black, Ruth could see how he had been almost invisible, without the lights on. (How long he had been sitting there, stock still, not to set the automatic sensors off, however, was a little worrying). "Besides," Harry's grown son hopped down off the bottom step and stepped towards them along the garden path, "I was in the neighbourhood,"

"I said I'd call," Harry repeated, guardedly. "You could have done the same courtesy, before turning up."

"You were out and mother says you generally don't listen to your messages."

Standing a few feet apart, they were glaring at each other like two mortal enemies, thought Ruth, watching the scene unfold raptly. Not a civil word had passed between them since Graham had – admittedly a little obnoxiously – burst in on their embrace. It was so strange, to see Harry this way, she thought, stepping slightly away from him and turning to look at the scene from a different angle. Both men looked as if they were sizing each other up for a battle to the death. It was such a far cry from the softness that had lurked in her lover's eyes, when he talked of Graham earlier. It was hard, seeing the way they looked at each other, to believe that Graham was even Harry's son. Although, she supposed, anger that much could only truly be fostered between two people who knew each other. And cared.

"Maybe we should all go inside," she suggested, quietly.

Graham turned, as if noticing her for the first time, and inclined his head politely, causing Ruth to start slightly.

"Good idea," he commented, almost pleasantly. "It's freezing out here."

It was strange, thought Ruth. The moment his eyes were off his father, they became instantly less antagonistic. And those eyes were so like Harry's that it was startling. The same colour, the same flecks of darker iris, around the edges, the same light eyelashes that fringed them thickly. It was not just anatomy, either, he had the same look in them, as if he had seen too much in his short life. He probably had, Ruth reasoned. She had read his file and it contained drug and alcohol addictions, jail time, hospital visits and rehab. Graham had circled the drain closer than most. And come back.

"I'm sorry, I don't think we've met," Ruth stepped forwards, emboldened by the man-boy's reaction to her suggestion. "I'm Ruth."

"The girlfriend?" Graham asked. If there was any loaded intent in his words, he hid it well.

Ruth glanced at Harry, then nodded.

Graham extended a hand.

"Graham." He gave a wry smile. "I'm the child that you have either heard _nothing_ about, or _far too much_."

Ruth took his hand and shook it, just a little hesitantly.

His fingers were longer and slimmer than Harry's, but the palm was smaller. He was younger and slightly taller, but he would always be slighter than his father, by the look of him, no matter how much muscle he built. Stepping back to Harry's side, Ruth turned to her lover and nodded towards the house.

"Shall we?"

Harry, who had not spoken a word since his aggressive snap at his son, cleared his throat and muttered something like; "probably best not to make a scene on front of the neighbours," then the lot of them trouped inside, pausing for the requisite forty seconds as Harry disarmed his two security systems and Graham politely asked Ruth what the time was and told her that her dress was very nice.

Tipping into the front hall, Harry headed straight for the kitchen while Graham dawdled a little behind him and Ruth took up the rear, not sure if she should follow them or excuse herself to the upstairs and wait out the inevitable argument out of sight. Part of her wanted to run but the other part of her, the curious spook part, wanted to see more of this strange man who had grown from the child who Harry had created. It was so strange, to see parts of him – like those eyes – which she had always considered to be uniquely Harry, mirrored in another living being. He was like a shadow of Harry – like a warped reflection. Younger, slightly different, but still recognisably the same in many ways.

The sight of him sparked a memory of the photograph Jane Townsend had left in her possession, the day she had unexpectedly dropped in. After slipping it into Harry's bathrobe pocket, Ruth had completely forgotten about it but it contained a picture of Harry and his baby son, the elder the spitting image of what the younger looked now. Wondering if the photograph was still in the pocket where she had left it, Ruth almost started when Graham turned to her, in the darkness of the hallway, and cheerfully asked;

"So have you two known each other long?"

Harry's head popped out of the kitchen and he barked, "Graham – kitchen – now!"

It was so reminiscent of him on the Grid that Ruth had to pinch herself to realise that the kitchen was not Harry's office and Graham was not the wayward Calum Reid, about to be given a dressing down over some operation gone wrong.

"I was just trying to make conversation," the younger Pearce told his father, as he sloped past into the kitchen, leaving Harry and Ruth standing alone in the hall.

Harry turned to her.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, in an almost whisper. "I didn't expect him to actually come here. Traditionally, we don't go for face-to-face contact."

Ruth shook her head.

"It's fine, honestly. Go to your son."

Harry looked mildly frightened to be reminded that he contributed half of the DNA to the man inside of the room, but nodded.

"I should tell him what I've decided," he nodded, as if saying it aloud would make it true without him having to go through the motions.

"You don't have to hide the lady away," Graham called, from the kitchen. "I promise not to misbehave."

Ruth looked to Harry.

"Do you want me to go upstairs?" she asked, nervously.

"To be honest, I think he'll behave better if you're there," Harry told her, sounding a little depressed about it.

"I can stay," Ruth offered.

"Only if you're sure."

"Of course I'm sure," she frowned at Harry, then bustled past him, into the room. "Would you like a cup of tea?" she asked her lover's grown son, sitting at the counter top.

Graham looked mildly surprised that Ruth knew her way around the kitchen so well. Perhaps he, like his mother when she had walked in on Ruth, had assumed her to be the subject of a one-night stand, or a passing fancy. Determined to show him otherwise and provide solid backup to Harry, whom Ruth had never seen so overcome by a situation in all her life, she turned to the kettle and took it over to the sink, filling it up with water and then sticking it back on the boil. As Harry shuffled back in and took up a seat at the opposite end to the counter from Graham – neither of them talking yet – she went into the cupboard and selected three mugs.

"How do you take it?"

"Milk, no sugar," they both chorused, then both looked disgusted to have cemented their similarity.

"I'll have it with only a dash of milk, if that's okay," Graham asked, stretching his fingers. "Need as much hot liquid as I can get. Nearly froze me nads off, sitting on that step for so long."

Harry shot him an angry look, whether for the language or the friendly demeanour, Ruth could not tell.

"That's no problem. You two get on with whatever you need to talk about," she added, gently pushing them into the conversation because it certainly did not look like they were going to get there themselves. "Don't mind me."

She clinked and went about making tea, listening to the two cough and shuffle around behind her, then Harry eventually take the upper hand of the situation and ask how Graham was, to which his son sarcastically pointed out that they had seen each other last night and this was hardly a social visit.

"I just need to know if you're going to give me the loan," he said, quite calmly, without a hint of nastiness about him. Clearly past disputes were to be set aside when asking for large sums of money. "If you can't afford it, or don't think it's wise, then it'd be better if you just came out and said it straight – then I can make other arrangements."

Ruth watched the pair of them in the reflection of the dark glassed window.

They looked so startlingly alike. So wonderfully alike.

From what little Harry had told her about Graham, and from the bits he had implied, she had expected not to like him – to find him argumentative and combative. And, sure enough, when he was around Harry, he was a little combative. But he was also polite to her and rather more in control of himself that Ruth had expected. That said, she supposed, he was now no longer a drug addict. Two years sober, five years clean, and one year in a steady job at a reputable employer. He was cleaning his life up and no doubt the last few years had leant themselves to a lot of growing up. He was not the young man who had disowned himself from Harry, seven years ago. If Harry could accept that, she thought, then maybe they could make progress.

.

Quietly, Ruth finished making the tea and handed it over to the pair of them, quietly slipping out of the room once they had started talking in earnest. As she moved to the living room and sat there, she heard the voices rise and fall a couple of times, but any arguments quickly dissipated again and she continued to read her book, sipping at her now-lukewarm beverage.

About fifteen minutes after they had first arrived in the kitchen, Ruth heard the scraping of chairs across the floor and the shuffling footsteps that signified Graham was leaving.

"I'll be in touch, over the next few days," she heard the young man telling Harry, as they walked down the hallway and stopped outside the door to the living room.

Ruth turned her head to catch sight of them, standing in the doorway.

"I'll have arrangements made on this end," Harry nodded.

There was a moment where neither of them seemed to know what to do next, then Graham held out his hand.

Harry shook it.

Ruth watched, with bated breath, from the sofa.

As they parted, it was not to any sort of mutual forgiveness, but there was a shared look of relief across their faces. Graham had come and got what he wanted. And, that Graham had come and they had talked without throttling each other, was Harry wanted. There had been mutual gain, then – even if forgiveness was not yet on the cards – and there was now the potential for so much more to come out of it. Harry was going to lend Graham the money. Graham, in return, was going to stay in contact. How Harry was going to enforce that, Ruth was not entirely sure but, from what she had gathered from her position in the next room, he was paying Graham the money in two instalments.

Turning from his father, the young man nodded to Ruth, across the room and she smiled back.

"Nice to meet you," he told her, lightly. "From what my mother says, you're not as young as the girl that he had here the other day – Rachael I think her name was – but_ I_ think you're nice. Too nice for him anyway," he added, then turned back to Harry. "See you later."

Harry stared.

Ruth stared.

Looking suitably smug, Graham turned on his heel and walked from the building, leaving them both in what he obviously assumed to be a pre-argument stupor.

The door slammed behind him and Ruth continued to stare straight ahead. She supposed that, if there had indeed been another woman in Harry's life – and she had not been, in fact, Rachael – that this would indeed have been a pre-argument. As her eyes lifted slowly over to Harry, however, and his slid onto hers, she could not help but feel a hint of a laugh tickling her lips.

"Ouch," she said, softly, as her partner groaned and rubbed his face in the palm of his hands.

"I'm so sorry..." he murmured, turning and walking into the room, over to the curtained window and peering out to watch his son's retreat.

"He plays the long game," Ruth noted, setting down her empty tea mug on the table and pulling the blanket she had wrapped around herself a little more snugly. "He picked up that I was not the woman his mother learned about, right away, but he waited until it was most advantageous to play the card."

"He can be a right little prick, sometimes," Harry agreed, quietly, watching his son disappear from sight then pulling the curtains to again. "Then again," he sighed, turning back, "I suppose he learnt from the best." Slipping his hands inside his pockets, he turned to face Ruth, looking sincerely apologetic. "Ruth, I feel terrible about all of this. It's really not fair. Every time you come here I seem to have one confounded family member or another dragging themselves through our personal business. And I should have said something," he added, wincing to himself, "about that last jibe but, to be honest, he just caught me so off-guard..."

"It's fine," Ruth smiled. "He's angry and he's trying to hurt you. I can understand feeling angry at your parents. I went through my fair share of teenage angst when my mother remarried."

"Except he's no longer a teenager," Harry pointed out. "He's twenty bloody seven."

"Twenty seven is the new seventeen, Harry," Ruth toyed, leaning back against the couch and beckoning him closer with her eyes. "Haven't you heard?"

He gave a soft grunt of disapproval.

"So what did you two agree on?" Ruth asked, eager to find out what had happened, during their discussion.

"All of the money, in two instalments, on the condition that I get business updates of every purchase, every customer, every detail of his new business, that I get to meet his new business partner in person and that he comes around here for dinner once a week, for at least an hour each time, and we have a civil conversation."

The last point threw her a little, but Ruth was willing to admit it was a good idea.

"Enforced bonding."

"It sounds dreadful, doesn't it?"

"It sounds better than where you are, right now," Ruth countered, gently.

Harry sighed, then walked over and flopped down on the couch beside her.

"I'm caught somewhere between angry and exhausted beyond belief."

"I'm sure its a common place, for you," Ruth commented, watching him fondly as he closed his eyes and leant back against the couch cushions.

He made a soft noise at the back of her throat.

A moment passed.

"Does that theory on twenty seven being the new seventeen have any scientific basis?" Harry asked, darkly, "Because I think he is actually aging backwards."

Ruth laughed, softly.

"I don't think so. But, if it does, it can't be all that bad. By that theory, forty is the new thirty, too," she smiled.

Harry opened one eye and looked at her, for a moment, then flopped back against the cushions and groaned.

"What?" she asked, frowning.

"You are only forty..."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Forty one. And sometimes it feels more than 'only'."

"You're so young and..."

"...nubile?" Ruth suggested, hopefully.

A smile curled his lips upwards at her playful suggestion, but Harry did not say anything.

Giving a soft sight, Ruth shifted, moving so that her body was facing his side-on and she could stroke his hair back from his face. It was getting a little shaggy around the edges, she thought, slipping her fingers through a soft half-curl. Soon enough, he would be looking as untidy as his son. Leaning forwards, she pressed a kiss into his forehead.

Affectionate moments in public they were still quite shy about, Ruth thought, but they were getting better at intimacy within the safety of their own homes. In just over two weeks, she had changed from being constantly nervous and cautious in Harry's presence to being able to almost fully relax. It was easier when his eyes were closed, too, Ruth thought, moving her lips further down to kiss the side of one temple. It was somehow less confrontational, without the scrutiny, and she felt as if she could do or say almost anything to him. It was getting to know him as an equal, she realised, tracing the soft lines down the side of his face, rather than as her boss.

He was still her boss, of course, but he was more than that now.

Now, she could do things like this...

"Being young and nubile-," she started, in a half whisper. Harry's lips curled up again, revealing just a little bit of white tooth. "-I have a voracious sexual appetite." Harry chuckled out loud. "And," Ruth continued, pushing past the butterfly nerves in her stomach, at being so bold, "if you'd like, you could take me upstairs to whet it, whilst you gloriously forget everything about your current complicated family situation." She pressed one final kiss against his head then lay her cheek back down against it. "...if you would care to, that is."

"If I would care to?"

She rubbed her cheek slightly against him, feeling their skin slide.

"Yes, but only if you stop feeling sorry for yourself," she stipulated. "Maudlin doesn't suit you."

His hands had slipped about her before she knew what he was doing and, in just a few seconds, he had lifted her gently from the couch, up to her feet and snug against him. Her dizzy head rested against his shoulder, face pressing into the hot skin of his neck. He smelt of cologne and whatever warm, masculine spices it contained. And Harry. Just Harry.

As she revelled in the success of her gamble, on blatant sexual distraction techniques, Ruth's lover reached down and cooped up her legs as well as he body, turning to carry her from the room. He was really rather good at the whole soppy romantic business, she thought, as she clung on a little tighter. Though she giggled and protested that he was going to drop her/bump her/break her, he negotiated the doorway and the long hallway with ease, arriving at the bottom of the stairs with them both intact and him only very slightly out of breath. Clearly age was not everything, she thought, as he shifted her a little higher, ignoring her insistence that he should let her down to walk up by herself. Clearly Harry was strong enough for both of them.

She buried her face deeper into his shoulder as he playfully threatened to toss her off the top banister and dug her fingers in tightly to the fabric of his jacket, listening to the now much heavier cadence of his breaths. This was not something she would do often, she resolved, for fear of hurting him. But just every now and then, often enough to stroke an ego, could not harm. He was hers, after all. It was her pleasure to keep him happy.

As he lay her on the bed and slipped his hands down to delicately remove first her shoes, then her tights, then start to unbutton her dress, Ruth murmured love to him and felt secretly so very glad that he had left her on her doorstep, five years ago. If he hadn't, then they would not be here, together, now. It might have taken them longer to get here, but that was just the path of their story. They were never meant to be some violent love, with a violent end. They were meant to burn slow and deep and maybe, just if they were lucky and the variables all fell into place in the right moments, rise up, finally, from the embers. They were meant to be slow and deep and beautiful.

As he made love to her, she told him that, whispered it against his skin.

Harry looked like he agreed.

.


	26. Chapter 26

.

_Chapter 26 – Beyond the Shadows_

.

Sleep was easy to come by, but broken violently by the buzz of the telephone, at around three o' clock in the morning.

The handset's insistent ring was a noise which quite routinely woke Harry from his sleep. It happened at all times of the night. Sometimes, he had only been dozing for a few minutes, only just drifting off to slumber, when its low vibration or its sharp ring would shake him back to his senses. Other times, it was in the small hours of the morning, when everything around was dark and his mind was fogged with sleep. Whenever it happened, however, he felt the same rush of confusion and irritation. As he jerked back to consciousness this time, only just aware of what had woken him and not quite aware of where he was, he also felt Ruth stir beside him.

"What's wrong?" she asked, her voice sleep-low and nervous.

"Phone," he grunted, reaching around in the darkness to determine where he was.

"Yours?"

"Don't know..."

"What time is it? Early or late?"

"Early, I think... Don't know..."

Everything was still in that completely confusing state that life found itself in, when you were jerked cruelly awake in the middle of the night. Ruth's foot was against his leg. The duvet had slid off his shoulder and it was freezing cold. Harry could feel the soft cushion of pillows and mattress below him but, for a few moments, he was not sure whether or not he was actually in his own bedroom. Things began to make a bit more sense, however, as he groped over the edge of the bed and around his bedside table.

His fingers connected with the familiar form of his lamp, then an alarm clock and then a book and his phone, sitting on top. His bedroom then, Harry realised, not Ruth's. It was not his phone that was ringing, however. As his fingers closed over it, they felt no vibration. The sides and back were cold and one press told him there were no missed calls.

And it was half past three.

"It's _very_ early," he groaned, dropping his phone and falling back into the warm spot his body had created on the mattress. "And it's your phone ringing."

Half past three. Harry closed his eyes, shuffling back into the warm cavern of the duvet. Why did people call at half past three? It was not a national emergency, because then he would have been called before Ruth. It was nothing that would require her to go in, because he would have been called first. It was nothing that could not wait until morning, then, unless it was to do with one of the leads she and Tariq were running up, on the Wood case, between their current tasks. Either that or it was personal. And the only people who would call Ruth at such a time of the night were her one remaining relative – a cousin, Harry thought – and Malcolm Wynn-Jones... who would probably call him first should anything have gone wrong.

Temptation whispered for him to fall back asleep, and let Ruth get on with whatever Ruth had to get on with, but the spook in Harry could not quite let the curiosity rest. Pulling his half of the covers tight around himself, then, he got comfortable and closed his eyes but remained very much awake as Ruth rolled over, reaching for her own handset. After a few seconds, he heard it fall to the floor then heard her scrabble a little further, pick it up and, finally, answer.

"Hello?" she asked, of the person on the other end of the line – in a lot kinder a tone than Harry knew he would have managed, after being woken so. "What can I do for you?"

She was a sweet one, his Ruth.

Harry turned his head on the pillow to free up and ear to hear what was going on more clearly. As he tilted his head, he caught the distant sound of Tariq Masood's voice.

"_-looking through the footage, as you said ...came across something."_

It was a work call, then. So why not call him and not Ruth? Was this a lead on the Wood case?

Harry opened one eye.

Ruth was frowning.

"Hang on, he's only sixteen..." she told Tariq, down the line.

"_I know. But it's a-,"_

Ruth shifted the phone against her ear, leaning forwards, and inadvertently cutting off most of the speaker. Harry could only hear fragments of the next few sentences.

"_...Wood at the embassy and... more of the police report... not underage... mother... If it is then I don't know what the next step is... completely out of our depth... Harry."_

Ruth glanced over at him.

Harry frowned.

On the end of the line, Tariq talked for another half a minute, then Ruth sighed and asked him to hold on for just a moment, while she checked on something. Lowering the phone, she pressed mute on the speaker and turned to face Harry.

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"What fresh hell?" he asked, slightly hesitantly.

"Tariq has found a connection between a known associate of the embassy bombers, and Torrance Wood's wife, Emily."

Harry sat up and switched the light on.

Any chance of sleep was over, for the time being. Work was back on the table.

"What sort of connection?" he asked, fearing the worst.

"A drug dealer," said Ruth, with a grim little smile. "Apparently, Torrance and Emily's son, Todd, was brought into the police station twice, during his stay in Shanghai, for having cannabis on the grounds of his private school. Apparently, one of these times, a man was arrested at the same time and from the same location as Todd – and was bailed out along with the boy, by the mother, Emily Wood. This young man looked familiar," Ruth said, "so Tariq ran him against our previous cross-checks and CCTV and he came up with identification. Twenty two year old Zhang Yi, also known as 'Ray'."

"_Ray_?" Harry asked, incredulously.

"Apparently so." Ruth tapped the phone thoughtfully against the mattress. "As it turns out, Ray is a known associate of two of the embassy bombers, who tried to kill Todd's father. They all ran in the same gang, implicated in the import of low-grade cocaine."

Harry frowned.

"Wait, I thought Todd was only ever arrested for carrying pot?"

Ruth dismissed his comment with a little shrug.

"The dealer must have been freelancing on the side. Shanghai is the busiest container shipping port in the world and almost impossible to police. And, what with the rich and the poor becoming more stratified, there has been a vast increase in disposable income to a younger generation. Drug, car and sex industries are booming."

"So Todd buys drugs from the friend of the men who tried to kill his father," Harry stated, softly, "and his mother bails them both out." A moment passed as he thought. "That could just be her covering her son's drug habit... it does not mean she had further involvement."

"No," Ruth agreed, looking just a little worried. "But Ray has a list of known associates as long as my arm. He has a connection not only to the three embassy bombers but also the brother of our London assassin. They were incarcerated together in 2006."

Harry groaned.

How three complete amateur bombers had been linked to a professional hit man had perplexed him all the way through this case. Now that the connection was revealed, it both relieved and irked him that there had been no way of figuring it out with common sense. They were linked by an individual who had just never come into the investigation until now.

"Why didn't we know about this sooner?" he asked Ruth, shaking his head.

"It's blind luck that we're finding out about it now," she insisted, a little defensively. "The police report on Todd's arrest did not say that Emily Wood had bailed out another man that night, or that Todd had been arrested alongside anyone else. It was just Tariq's diligence that turned that particular detail over. We owe him this lead," she pressed, gently, for credit for their young technical officer. "He was only supposed to be searching for cases of public disturbance, at the embassy."

"So," Harry sighed, "do we think that Emily bribed someone to alter the reports, to have them unconnected?"

"I don't know. It could simply have been an administrative error."

"Which just helped to cover up her connection to these men?" Harry shook his head. "No. Too much of a coincidence." A couple of seconds passed, then swore quietly, giving a little grimace of annoyance. "Hell, Ruth, we showed Emily Wood photographs of the assassin, when Juliet brought him to us. She point-blank lied and said she did not recognise him!"

"She might not actually have ever met the assassin," Ruth pointed out, softly. "All we know is that she met Ray, who knows his brother. That's two degrees of separation, Harry."

"Bugger that," Harry grunted. "She might not know the face, but she knew who he was."

A moment passed in silence.

"People lie."

"I know that."

"I know you know." Another silence. "What do you want to do?"

Harry sighed.

"We take this to the Home Secretary with anything less than titanium-solid proof and the proverbial shit will hit the proverbial fan." It was a bloody diplomatic nightmare – not to mention the wide-reaching implications on the energy deals that Consul Wood and his government had been trying to push, abroad. Handled incorrectly, this revelation could be incredibly damaging. Turning to Ruth, Harry raised an eyebrow. "Why would the wife want Wood dead?"

"An affair on either side, a breakdown of the marriage, depression, a mental disorder... I don't know, Harry, but she was on-edge when I met her, the other night. Something is going on. She was overly protective of the son, for one thing."

"Do you think the boy knows?"

"I don't know. Perhaps. It was odd that, while he was the only one in the embassy during the bombing, he was on the opposite side of the building – far enough away to be completely safe."

"Could be coincidence," Harry pointed out.

"It could all be coincidence..."

Silence pervaded the room, for a moment, the only sound that of snowflakes as they hit the glass, outside.

Beside Harry, Ruth looked pensive. And more than a little sad.

It was surprising, he mused, that she was still surprised by the depravity of humanity. That a wife could wish her husband dead and orchestrate it – possibly using her son as a shield – was, truthfully, a terrible thing. But they saw the terrible so often, in their line of work, that Harry had expected the shock to have filtered out long ago. It did so with most of his spooks. Not with Ruth, however. Ruth was different. Special. A little more optimistic, perhaps, than most who came into the Service. It was why he needed her around, Harry reminded himself. Humanity was important.

Rubbing his face in his hands, he breathed out his frustration at the timing of their latest break, and looked down at the phone.

"Okay," he sighed, leaning back against his pillows. "Tell Tariq to rip Emily Wood's life apart. I want another check on her story and see if we can get footage to run through gait-analysis – see if we can find her meeting any of these men in the area around the embassy." Harry frowned, pulling the duvet higher around his middle. The air in the house was freezing cold at three in the morning and neither of them were wearing much clothing after the way they had fallen into bed last night. "Get someone over to show this man's photograph to our assassin, too. I doubt he'll tell us anything, but it's worth a try."

Nodding and giving a taut smile, Ruth sighed, pressed the mute button again and lifted the phone again to her ear.

"Tariq?" she asked, down the line. "Yes, I need you to try and find out if Emily Wood has any private bank accounts that she does not share with her husband. Yes, that's the idea. No. We need to try and match up any large movements of money, around the time of the two attempts on Torrance Wood's life. We already know how much the assassin was paid. And another run through of the CCTV, this time with gait-analysis." A pause. "You're right, I know we've checked that side of things. We just want to be thorough." Another pause. "Access to that software? Section C. Speak to Nick Campbell about it." A frown. "...I don't know... Grade A, possibly?" she wrinkled her nose and her head turned slightly so that her eyes could slip over Harry.

In the gap between her ear and the phone, Harry could hear fragments of Tariq's end of the conversation, again.

"_...access to the programs direct from mainframe... liaise with C... clearance high enough... wait to speak to Harry, tomorrow morning?"_

Harry noticed Ruth's throat bob and anticipated what she was about to do just seconds before she did it.

"Actually, I've got Harry here now, if you want to speak to him," she said, calmly – so calmly that Harry had to re-evaluate exactly what he had heard.

Clearly Tariq had to re-evaluate too, because he fell very silent, for a moment.

The phone line went quiet.

The bedroom went quiet.

In the lamplight, Harry stared at Ruth and Ruth watched him back, equal parts scared and excited.

She had told them, thought Harry, his head ringing with all that had happened in the last five minutes. They had a brand new and promising lead on what they thought was a cold case and Ruth had told the team about their new relationship – well, implied it, really, but it had sounded better than he ever could have hoped. It was hardly ambiguous, after all. It was three in the morning and, to have him with her as she woke, could only mean that she was spending the night. They were public, then, Harry thought, feeling everything a little more acutely for a second – feeling a sudden rush of terror that he had not been expecting to feel, at this moment. They were out in the open.

Everything hung on the moment, for just a few seconds. Then, reality began to dribble through. Harry's heart beat quite resolutely slow, for a few more seconds, then it started to increase, as he breathed slowly out.

On the other end of the phone line, Tariq cleared his throat and gathered himself too, replying with a very rushed and faintly audible_; "yes, thank you, that would be useful."_

Without further ado, Ruth handed over the phone, giving Harry a little smile as she did so.

Harry lifted it to his ear.

"Hello Tariq, did you know it is three in the morning?" he asked, tone purposefully brusque, to hide his surprise at the situation.

"_Yes, sir, I know, sir, sorry_," the young technical officer babbled apologetically. He sounded more nervous than Harry had ever heard him, including at his interview and Ruth shot a reproachful look because of his part in it. On the line, Tariq continued. "_I just wasn't sure if I should wait until morning but Ruth agrees with me, that we need to have a deeper look into Todd Wood's bank accounts. We've found a connection between_-,"

"You don't have to explain it all again, Tariq," Harry assured him, a little more gently this time. "I heard." Despite wanting to appear as clipped and profession as possible, he felt a little for the young techie. He had not had so many 'sir's directed his way since Dimitri stepped off the boat and into Thames House. And, he supposed, being the first one to hear that your boss and your colleague were sleeping together couldn't be easy to react correctly to, especially not with Tariq's rather delicate disposition, in situations of emotional stress. He should go easy on the younger man. "Dig through the bank accounts," he told Tariq, a little more gently than normal, "find out what you can and I'll send authorisation over to C. With Nick's blessing, you can commandeer their software for as long as you need."

"_Thanks_."

"And Tariq," he asked, grabbing the young man before he could hastily hang up.

"_Yes_?"

"Once you've set up your tasks, take a shower, pull out a camp bed and get a few hours of sleep. Calum's in at six and he can hold the fort for a while."

The young man breathed a sigh of relief.

"_Yes, Harry."_

A pause.

"Do you want to speak to Ruth again?" Harry asked, as the conversation drew to a close and he realised he was still on Ruth's line.

"_Uh, yes, just for a second_," Tariq admitted and Harry could almost hear the scarlet blush that was no doubt crawling all over his officer's face.

"Okay."

Harry handed the phone over to Ruth, who rolled onto her side to receive it.

"Tariq?" she asked, then, "yes, that's fine. I'd run it alongside your spider program. We need as much information on him as possible. Contact foreign intelligence about aliases and leave a summary on my desk. I'll be in early, to help out, so go get some sleep until seven." A pause, "yes." A tiny smile appeared on her lips. "No, Tariq, it's fine. Honestly, it's fine." She breathed out, softly – almost a laugh. "I'll see you later," she bid her colleague a warm goodnight then, turning the phone of her in her hand, ended the call.

Dropping the handset onto the side table, Harry's lover lay on her back, gave a hefty sigh and stared up at the ceiling. A delicate line had formed across her forehead but it did not appear, to Harry, to be due to worry. It seemed more a contemplative sort of expression. A calm, contemplative sort of expression. Not a scared one.

Harry's blood sang with the rise in adrenaline in his system.

She had told them.

The team knew.

He watched his lover for a long moment, wondering if she was thinking what he was – if the same terrors that were now coursing through him were what had bothered her all along. Now that they were in the open, they were somewhat exposed. They were vulnerable to anyone who wanted to take a swing at them. Before, it was known that he and the analyst had history – and that Harry Pearce would do almost anything to protect his team – but there had been enough plausible deniability for their enemies to think twice, before using it against him. Now, he was sleeping with his analyst. Openly. That spoke that they meant enough to each other to try and make a life beyond the shadows and life beyond the shadows was where his enemies would try and target him.

Soft underside. Achilles heel.

His worries, however, faded away as he swept his eyes over her. He knew it was selfish and silly of him, but it felt so good to finally have them know she was his. This beautiful woman was his. And she was beautiful, not just to his eyes, he was sure. Wearing just a vest and wrapped in his duvet, he could see the soft lines of her body, the gently rounded sides of her belly, the dip before her ribs, soft breasts, small shoulders, beautifully sculpted neck. She was too beautiful for him but she was his and he would defend, viciously, his place in her life. He could be a jealous prick, sometimes, but he would rather have something to be jealous over than the loneliness. He would rather be here, with her, than anywhere else in the world.

"Thank you," he told her, softly, reaching a hand out to touch her cheek.

She did not turn to look at him, but smiled.

"That was remarkably easier than I expected."

"You didn't plan it," Harry pointed out.

"No."

"That's why."

Ruth let out a low sigh, then turned her head, resting her cheek into his palm as she looked at him.

"I'm sorry it took so long."

"I'm not sorry," Harry stated, shaking his head. "I'm not sorry about any part of us."

His lover smiled.

"Good."

A moment or two passed, just watching each other.

"We should get back to sleep," Harry told her, toying with a silken strand of brunette hair that had curled loose upon the pillow. "Need to be up in a few hours."

"Hmm."

He bit over his lip, watching her, feeling his body call out to hers in a way that was so familiar, yet had not happened, so soon after the night before, in many years. In his youth, he could have taken her thrice, back to back, but now he needed a good few hours. More than three, he would have thought... but...

"Actually, scratch that," he told her, softly, pulling himself closer. "Can I keep you up for twenty more minutes?"

Ruth's smile stretched.

Rolling over, she reached up and turned off the light. The last lit view Harry got of her being her vest top riding up, over the rise of round buttocks. His body burned a little hotter, in response.

"Make it ten and I'll say yes," came her voice, through the dark, her smile as evident as her pleasure.

.

He made it ten.

.

They dragged themselves into work through what had turned to snow, during the night. The roads were treacherous. All across England, transport had ground to a halt – motorways backed up with jack-knifed lorries, trains encountering the wrong kind of wind or leaves or rain – and the city was little better. Though the streets were ploughed, salted and gritted, the ice had made certain parts treacherous and those same were now impassable due to broken down cars and wedged delivery trucks. It would all clear up by that afternoon, thought Harry, when the air warmed enough for the ice to melt, but for now the media was treating the situation like it was Armageddon.

Panic! White-out! and Trapped! were the headlines in three of the major newspapers on the stand, as he and Ruth passed it on their way down to Thames House. Their building itself looked completely unbothered by the snow, as it looked unbothered by most things. Made of stone several feet thick, it would take a jolly sight more than a touch of bad weather to render it inoperable. And, Harry thankfully noted, the streets around it and the Home Office were rather cleaner than those further out, in the City. Glad to see someone had got their priorities right, he pushed his way through into the building, Ruth following at heel, on the phone to one of her GCHQ contacts already.

She looked slightly worried, about this being their first arrival together, but also determined not to let him see it. Harry, being utterly thankful that she had decided to make them public and terrified that she might change her mind and deny it, at any moment, did not venture to ask if she was okay as her phone call ended and they took the stairs up to Section D's nest, in the middle of the building. He exchanged platitudes about the Wood case instead, as they checked themselves in through security, and dumped Ruth's bag and coat in the cloakroom.

She had managed to calm down a little, by the time they entered the Grid, but all of that was thrown again by Calum turning to her as they crossed the room and doing a double take and smile to see Harry at her side.

"Morning," he greeted them both, jovially – a touch too jovially, in Harry's opinion, for someone who was working on a case of attempted murder. His eyes danced between them with a mixture of delight and expectation. "You're both in early."

Beginning to wonder why he had pulled the younger officer back from his Bradford operation to help out and why, in fact, he would ever considered him for promotion at all, Harry gave a nod in reply.

"Morning."

"Anything on Emily Wood?" Ruth asked, in a none-too-gentle steer of the conversation away from 'them', where Calum's mischievous nature was undoubtedly about to head off to.

"Nothing much, yet," he shrugged, cheeky smile sliding away as he turned to giving a status report. Back to the professional. "A few more details recovered from the arrest reports but nothing with any real information. Tariq's program has identified a couple of bank accounts but we can't seem to get access to any of the outgoing transactions. I'm working with C Section over a tricky hack." The younger officer turned to Harry. "Erin and Dimitri are in at half ten. Tariq's back on shift in fifteen minutes and I have the three analysts already working through our backlog of our MSS CCTV, trying to see if Emily Wood met Ray after bailing him out."

"Do we have any more on Ray?" Harry asked.

Calum pulled a slight face.

"To be honest, not really. We know who he ran with and some things he's been involved in, in the past but the name Zhang Yi is about as useful in a cross-check as a-,"

"-about as much use as entering John Smith," Ruth finished for him, clearly determining that whatever their younger colleague was about to say was not entirely appropriate for the workplace. "It's a very common name in the area."

Calum shrugged and nodded.

"So what do you want us to do, boss?" he asked, slipping his hands into his pockets and focussing over with a look of focussed determination.

Harry lifted his eyes over the Grid, taking in the staff present and thinking over what he had to do.

"We are absolutely sure that our TerraPharm lead is dry?"

"As sure as we were yesterday, when we told Consul Wood," Calum assured him. "This is our only lead."

Then the kid's bank account it was, then.

"Okay. Cut everything else, for the next few hours. Keep one of the junior analysts on new chatter coming in, but everyone else on this lead. Calum, go and man Tariq's tasks, until he's back. Ruth," he turned to his lover, who lifted blue eyes to him enquiringly, "you and Tariq have the Grid until Erin's in at half past. You two have been working this lead, you know where you want to go with it. Calum's here to help you with any diplomatic situations with C Section. I need to make a run over to Chelsea, to deal with Juliet Shaw but I'll try and stir some old contacts on the way, see if I can wrangle free any information on the Wood family. I'll get the profile for your man – Zhang Yi, or Ray, or whatever he calls himself – over to Neilson, too, and see if he can get a hit. Perhaps he will be as eager to help as to take the case off our hands,"

Ruth and Calum nodded.

"I'll see you both later," Harry sighed, then turned on his heel and headed off to his office.

As he stepped inside and flicked on the lights, he watched Ruth and Calum chatting on the far side of the Grid. While his partner's shoulders were tighter than normal and the way she held herself slightly hesitant, she looked more relaxed than he had expected her to be.

A positive.

Turning his attention to his phone and his desk, Harry set to work.

.

None of Harry's contacts had anything on Emily Wood and seemed unduly angry to be bothered over something that their junior officers had already provided information on, earlier on in the investigation. Such was the problem of having overlooked something, thought Harry, as he padded resolutely down the street from where he had parked. Chelsea glittered in the frosty morning. The earlier blizzard had ended and, though the roads were beginning to slowly clear, it was still a bad day for travel. It had taken Harry half an hour more than he would have liked to get to the safehouse, to speak to Juliet – something he did not really want to do but was unfortunately required.

To top of his frustration, he had had to park all the way down at the other end of the road because there was already one pool car in the drive. Pedantic as it may seem, keeping their similar number plates apart could save lives. So, Harry was forced out into the cold.

And it _was_ cold, too. Frigidly so. His nose was almost numb by the time his feet carried him to the big door of the house and the knuckles he rapped against its wood were all but frozen. In the dead of winter, he thought to himself, lines of poetry from his youth coming to thought as he turned to look around him at the glistening world London became, in mid January. So cold, so white it almost looked pure. It could have been any city, here, in any part of the world. The local stone was hidden by ice and snow-covered ivy. The cars were buried under a few inches of the stuff. A hidden world, he thought, turning back to the door as it opened.

A warm breeze bathed him as he stepped into the hall, introducing himself to the young security officer who looked rather impressed to have received a visit in person from a Section Head and was determined to make the most of it, assuring Harry of his diligence at his task of keeping Juliet and Zoe and her family under wraps. Harry thanked him as profusely as his patience would allow and asked to make his way through by himself, to the lounge, where Zoe was to be found.

She was sitting near the fire, feeding it pieces of twisted paper, when he entered.

She startled, at the sound of her name.

"Zoe?"

"Harry!" Her face split into a wide grin and she quickly stood, making her way back over, brushing down slightly sooty hands on her jeans before throwing them around him in a hug.

The embracing seemed to have become their natural way of greeting one another, since she had returned, so Harry accepted it willingly. He was not her boss, now, he reminded himself. And he had far too few friends to be choosy about who he hugged. So, he gave the younger woman a smile as she pulled back from him and asked her how she was.

"Surviving. Bored." She looked around herself. "Drowning in excess house yet completely unable to escape my family. You know how it is. The mind festers when it is not applied," she smiled.

Harry nodded, understanding what she was going through more than she knew. One time, in his youth, sprang to mind when he thought of being trapped and festering. A broken leg in the field, a three week stint where he was not even allowed in to sit behind a desk. He had spent most of it holed up in the cramped room of his family house which used to serve as his office once Graham no longer needed it as a nursery. He had close the blinds, concentrated in, become obsessed with details in his past reports which should not have been interesting even to the most anal of spooks. He had stopped one or two days short of becoming a conspiracy theorist and only then because Jim Coaver had appeared at his doorway, bearing smuggled Cuban cigars and an enormous bottle of whiskey which had brought him out of his stupor.

Harry could not remember which had made Jane more furious – his retreating into his office lair, or his getting absolutely hammered with his old buddy from America, in their living room. He could remember the arguments afterwards, though, as vividly as then. They had been made infinitely worse by his pounding hangover and the pain in his leg. It had been winter then, too, Harry thought, looking out the window of the large Chelsea house and then back at Zoe.

"How are you holding up, with the weather?"

"Dana's going mad, not being able to go out and make a mess in the snow," Zoe admitted. "I'm allowed to take her to the park later, supervised, but it'll all be melted by then."

"I'll have a word with security. See if I can't spring you early," Harry joked.

Zoe's eyes warmed.

"Thank you. How are you?" she asked, then added, with another warm smile, "How's Ruth?"

"Good and she's well," Harry paused, for a brief moment, not entirely sure what to say. He still was not absolutely at ease with the idea of them being out in the open. For the most part, he liked it, but then there were always moments like these – where he did not want to say too much, for fear of frightening Ruth off with his enthusiasm. In the end, he decided that it was okay, as Ruth had told Zoe before anyone else anyway. "She has the Grid, at the moment, so I daren't think what state it will be in when I return," he joked, softly.

Zoe grinned.

"I can imagine Ruth running the Grid."

"It is utterly terrifying," Harry commented, his joke not far from the truth. Ruth's haphazard way of managing an operation was not one which would work in the long-term, but she had Calum with her this morning – who was as anal about organisation as he was about his finely polished shoes, and he would keep her right. And it was only until Erin returned at half ten. "She's got a new lead on the Wood case. It's why I'm here, unfortunately."

Zoe looked just the tiniest bit disappointed.

"Not a social call, then?"

"I think we can manage to multitask," Harry softened the blow. "Any chance of a cup of tea?"

His ex-officer nodded vigorously.

"Of course. Make yourself comfortable. I'll go get the kettle on and call Jules... Juliet," she corrected herself, hastily, then – giving her head a little shake and Harry an apologetic smile – turned and walked from the room.

Harry was left to warm himself by the fire.

.

About five minutes later, the door opened and he turned, expecting Zoe to come in, bearing tea. Who he found, however, was Juliet with a sleeping five-year-old on her shoulder.

His insides roiled, slightly, with discomfort.

"Hello Harry."

"Juliet," he greeted her somewhat shortly, then eyed the child. "I see Dana's doing well."

"As well as can be expected. Tired herself out this morning, throwing tantrums about not being able to go out and play. Her father's sulking in the kitchen and her mother is too tired to deal with her."

The child was somewhat too large for Juliet's arms but clinging in the way that children tended to do with mothers, grandmothers and aunts – as if they had done so all their life. The little girl's hands were knotted into the back of Juliet's jumper and the woman wearing it did not look in the slightest bit bothered that her cashmere may become stretched by the small fingers. It was so unlike her, so completely and surprisingly different to see her being maternal, that Harry was thrown into silence.

They had so much history. Every interaction was too awkward. He just wanted her out of his life again. She was due in court next week, he reminded himself. There was not too much longer to wait. She would testify against the others involved in Yalta and then she would plead guilty and do her time. Three and a half years, they were going to give her. It was all decided. She would go away and, when she came out, Harry would never see her again. Witness protection, the chance of a new life. It was not a fitting punishment, but she had brought them somewhat of a lead, with the assassin, and he had agreed. He had given her his word.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" Juliet asked, softly, carrying the little girl over to Harry and the fire.

Harry remained resolutely silent, watching her approach, dreading where this conversation was going to take them because it verged on deeply emotional territory.

"She's going to be six next week," Juliet commented, softly. "I suppose I'll miss it."

It was not overtly manipulative, but Harry knew she never said anything just to make small conversation.

"I can't push back the court date. You know that."

A sad little smile tickled his old, once-friend, once-lover, once-boss's lips.

"I know that," she agreed. "It's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" Harry asked, a little testily.

He hated, absolutely hated, feeling like he was being played. And, when he was with Juliet, he felt as if he were being played all the time.

Juliet, however, did not seem so very interested in torturing him today. Lifting her eyes off the sleeping Dana, she just gave him a little shrug.

"I don't know, Harry. I'm just being melancholy." Her eyes slipped over him and then the fire and then out to the cold white of the land outside the window. "I never did like January, much, did I?"

"No."

It was one of the few things they had agreed on.

Standing opposite one another, Harry felt a wave of melancholy pass over him now – a strange mixture of regrets for all of the failed relationships in his life. He was so happy with Ruth, he would not change what had happened between them for anything in the world, but it did not stop him from wondering what path his life would have taken if he had stayed with Jane – or if he had stayed with Juliet. A few seconds was all it took to surmise a possible outcome.

With Jane, he would have grown more and more distant and she more and more depressed and eventually, they would have just fallen apart and into darkness. With Juliet, well, Harry still had trouble imagining what would have happened. He thought, some days, that they would simply have eaten each other alive. They had been so young and so passionate and so perfectly suited to fight and love one another – but there had been no strength behind that, he reminded himself. She had wanted power and he had wanted justice and those two so very rarely went hand in hand. He supposed it would not have been so bad if he had been a less jealous or proud man, who was not afraid to stand in her shadow, but his youth had borne him many disfavours and pride was one of them. He had been proud. So, whenever he felt threatened by her, he had lashed out. They had ended, he concluded, where they had to end. They would never have made it longer than they did.

Sad truths, thought Harry, letting his eyes drift over her melancholy face. Sad reality that they were doomed to be enemies.

"You look tired," he commented, polite as close as he could get to friendly.

She looked like she were grieving, he thought inside, though for what he would not dare wonder.

"I am," she answered, simply. "This is all such a drain. I just wish I could-," her lips closed and she swallowed her words, pushing them back behind a tight smile and turning back to Harry, shuffling over and sitting down on the couch so that the child could curl against her. "I just wish it was all over."

"Not too long now," Harry reminded her.

A strange look passed over Juliet's eyes.

"Indeed."

Their strangely civil conversation was sharply interrupted by Zoe returning from the kitchen bearing a tray of tea and hot chocolate, for her and Harry and Dana and Juliet, respectively, and biscuits. She set the tray on the coffee table and yabbered on for a few minutes about teas and coffees and the problems they were having getting people to buy the right ones. Meanwhile, Dana woke up and Juliet busied herself with helping her make her hot chocolate and put marshmallows on the top, then with selecting a biscuit as Zoe continued to chat on.

"I'm not entirely sure what you teach them during training, nowadays," Zoe finished, with a short laugh.

Her expression was strained. Harry wondered if she had met her husband, who Juliet had said was sulking in the kitchen. He got the vague impression that Juliet was not happy with the way Will North was treating her companion and business partner but also inferred, from her comments, that she was keeping her nose out – a distinctly un-Juliet-like thing to do. He would keep an eye on the situation, he told himself, taking a sip of tea. He would personally take an interest in their witness protection and where they were settled into, once this was all over. He owed Zoe that much.

"Now," the younger woman began, as Harry set down his tea on the mantelpiece and turned towards them, looking more businesslike. "What was it you wanted to talk to us about?"

Taking a deep breath, Harry began.

.


	27. Chapter 27

.

_Chapter 27 – One of Us_

.

Erin had taken over command of the Grid by the time Harry returned, that afternoon – something that Ruth was infinitely glad for. She had quite enough to deal with without the added pressure of being in charge of an operation.

Most of the morning had passed in a haze of nervous tension, Ruth trying desperately not too pay too much attention to anyone talking quietly in groups, or laughing, or to the occasional smiles she received when she met someone's eyes across the room. Holding onto her newfound bravery as tightly as she could, she pushed through her tasks – chasing foreign intelligence reports, arguing on the phone with an SIS liaison, trying to pick apart the mystery of Emily Wood's connection to the men who tried to kill her husband – all the time reminding herself that, while terrifying, she was much better prepared for her colleagues knowing about her and Harry this time around. For starters, they were in a real relationship, now. She was sure she wanted this. And she was older. And, she hoped, wiser. All she had to do, she told herself firmly, was to get through the day with as little human contact as possible. Once she had that under her belt, she decided, the rest would come more easily. And then, one day, it would all just fall into place and she would be ready to actually take a joke or two, or laugh at Harry with the others, or pretend she did not feel physically sick when she saw people joking around the water cooler.

For now, however, she was reduced to stammering like a schoolgirl every time one of her colleagues came over, to ask her a question; despite the questions never being about what she expected, despite them all, rather kindly, completely avoiding the subject of her newly exposed relationship. Despite them probably not being quite as interested in her and Harry as Ruth paranoidly thought they were.

Leaning back in her chair, Ruth looked over to the glass security doors, catching sight of her boss arriving back on the Grid. It sort made sense, she told herself, as she watched him fumble with his keycard then swipe it and enter. People probably just didn't care whether they were together or not. After all, while she thought they were bloody wonderful, they were hardly the most exciting thing to ever hit the Grid. Adrenaline and scandal came in heaps and bucketfuls, here. Her and Harry were just idle gossip, the novelty of which would be beginning to wear off, what with them having been together for weeks now and not done anything spectacularly silly – like getting caught naked and entwined in the stationary cupboard. The team had already knew about them since New Years, after all. An official announcement was more of a formality than news.

Stepping distractedly through the security door, Harry paused inside and stood there, looking around himself.

Ruth watched, with slightly narrowed eyes. He had gone to talk through the situation with Zoe and Juliet, to check that there was nothing either had overlooked. It had been a long shot but he had been meaning to go today anyway, to read through last-minute arrangements for Juliet's court date, and he said it was worth a shot. By the expression on his face now, however, it had not gone so well. Eager to find out more, she tilted her head, slightly, the small movement catching his attention across the Grid.

Harry's eyes slipped over and locked on hers.

She raised an eyebrow, a little inquiry into how it had all gone.

He gave an infinitesimal shake of the head.

She twitched a corner of her mouth.

He turned to her and paced over.

"Zoe asked me for a job," he told her, as he reached the side of her desk, not bothering with introductions.

Ruth felt her eyebrows slide up, surprise filling her expression. She had suspected that Zoe had yearned to come back, but she had doubted that the younger woman would actually go through with asking Harry if it was possible. Ruth had considered it a passing fancy – a hankering after the old life whilst being trapped in the tragedy of her new one. She had thought that Zoe's child would lead her to make a more conservative career choice. But, it appeared, she was wrong. Zoe wanted to be a spook again.

"After the meeting," Harry continued, "after talking to Juliet and asking them both about Emily Wood – they had nothing extra for me, by the way – she walked me to the door and asked if she could 're-apply'."

"For her old job?"

"Not necessarily." Harry sighed, deeply. "She said she didn't mind starting out at a lower pay grade, to be back in the Section. She just wants to be back doing something she knows how to do and that matters."

Ruth nodded, more than understanding the situation. Work had been the only stable part of her life, after returning from Cyprus. Its stability even made up for being in close contact with Harry, every day. Or, perhaps, she told herself, that had simply been the masochistic side of herself, desiring punishment for George and Nico.

"What did you say?" she asked her boss nervously,

"I honestly don't know what I am supposed to say to that," he muttered.

"But what _did_ you say?"

"I told her I would think on it."

"Well, I suppose that gives you time..." Ruth trailed off, eyes tracing over her boss/lover's face. He looked more torn up about this news than he had been upon discovering that Torrance Wood's wife might be behind the attacks, or that his entire investigation was falling apart around him. He really had no clue when it came to personal relationships, she mused, watching him. Give him one good emotionally-loaded conversation and the world started falling around his ears.

"I suppose."

"Is it even possible to have her back?"

"I'd have to pull some serious strings. She has a criminal record."

"I was dead," Ruth pointed out.

Harry gave her a reproachful look.

"Well, I was... officially."

"That was a different situation," he mumbled, looking a little put off by her mentioning that particularly dark period in their past. "The government did not send you to jail as punishment for the Service's crime. Zoe was to be made an example of. I could hardly just open the door and let her back in."

"Talk to the DG," Ruth urged, then paused. "Unless, of course, you don't think she should come back."

"Honestly," Harry admitted, "I'm not sure. She has spent a long time in the private sector and with Juliet Shaw, of all people."

"But she is one of us," Ruth stressed, softly. "She went away _for us_."

A silence.

Harry nodded.

"I understand that," he told her, softly.

It was his way of ending the discussion without getting confrontational. Ruth had noticed him do it a couple of times before, in both their professional and personal lives. Harry did not like to give in, or admit defeat. So, instead of conceding a point, he told her that he understood her argument and gently moved the subject matter on without actually disagreeing. He was talented, the way he could do it without sounding trite, but that did not mean they had got anywhere with the discussion. He was sneaky, her lover, thought Ruth. She must never forget that she was sleeping with a spook. Boss spook.

"How are things going?" he asked her, looking around the Grid.

"Nothing much to report."

"Anything new on Ray or Emily Wood?"

"Nothing. Calum thinks he has a friend who can get us into Emily Wood's savings account and look any outgoing payments."

Harry gave a softly disgruntled noise.

Ruth watched him, trying to match the distant hardness in his eyes with the lover who had whispered reverently against her skin, in the aftermath of their early morning coupling. It was difficult for thirty seconds or so. Then he looked back towards her, giving a short smile, and she could see all the sides of him sliding into one. Harry her boss, Harry her lover, Harry her friend – Harry as others knew him, as she knew him and as he knew himself. All different. All part of one person.

"I'll bring the report through in about half an hour," she told him.

He nodded then cited a need to go and snark at someone down the phone line and strode back to his office.

Ruth turned back to her computer screen, her mind deep in thoughts about Harry. And spooks. And Zoe.

.

The rest of the day passed with a strange sped-up, slowed-down feeling, like there was someone in control behind the scenes, playing with a remote, determining whether an hour would disappear before her or drag on for ages. Ruth spent her time equally divided between running tasks with Calum, for Tariq, and running her own investigation into the embassy bombing. It was slow work.

Because of the vast amount of resources the MSS had spent investigating the incident, Harry had deemed it more important, previously, to concentrate on the second attempt on the Consul's life – the one which occurred in London – Ruth, however, was a great believer in there being a direct link between the amount of background information you had and the conclusions you were able to draw, from a situation. She liked as to gather as information as she could collect, as irrelevant as it might seem, at the time. She liked to know all the little details and see them spread out before her because, only when it was all assembled together was it possible to see what was and what was not important. Data analysis, in her line of work, generally meant cutting out irrelevant data, but today a special case. Today, it was about gathering it all back together – re-examining things which had been previously dismissed and trying to make connections that would lead them to their proof.

They needed good proof. They needed incontrovertible proof. Proof that they could take before the Home Secretary, to implicate one of his oldest friend's spouses in attempted murder, and not be fired for. So as half four came, Ruth found herself sitting at her desk, surrounded by a whole table full of scribbled notes. It was the assembled product of her day. Her eyes had become too tired to stare at the screen any longer and, hoping that something would jump out at her if it was in hard copy, she had printed out sections of file and annotated them with post-its, before spreading it out all around her.

It was like a spider's web of information, she mused, watching all the lines she had drawn and trying to see what their hidden pattern was. All she needed to do was tug the right string and it would all fall into place. Somewhere in here was the truth of who wanted Torrance Wood dead and why and how they had tried. And all she needed was to figure out where.

"Bloody hell," Calum muttered, appearing behind her, causing Ruth to jump in her seat. "Have you gone completely insane?"

Turning to her colleague, she wrinkled her nose.

"Don't sneak up on people," she admonished, softly.

Calum ignored her admonishment, leaning over her desktop to look closer. "This looks like the work of a depraved psychopath."

Ugly, isn't it?"

He cocked his head, taking in the strange arrangement of data. "Yes, but its also oddly hypnotising..."

They stood and sat and stared for another minute.

"See anything in the madness?" Ruth asked him, a little hopelessly. "Some glaringly obvious clue that we've overlooked that magically solves everything?"

Calum let out a low laugh. "Nope." He leant forwards, squinting at a couple of scribbled notes next to the three photographs of the embassy bombers. "These are the three self-decapitated bombers, who know Todd's friend Ray?"

"Yes," Ruth nodded.

"I didn't realise they were only twenty. The assassin and his brother are a lot older, aren't they?" Calum commented, softly, looking between the photographs.

Ruth nodded again, sure that this information must mean something but unable to process it due to the sheer amount going through her head.

They stared at the diagram for a while longer, then Calum sighed and asked her if she wanted coffee. Tired and thought-numb, Ruth could honestly not think of a better idea.

"You want to put it on or shall I?" she asked, rising and turning towards the coffee machine on the Grid.

"God no," Calum shook his head. "That stuff tastes like acid." He nodded towards the door. "Come on, we've been working since eight. Harry won't mind us taking fifteen minutes to go and get some real stimulants."

Glancing through the glass of her boss's office and at his glowering face, Ruth wouldn't bet that he wouldn't mind them taking fifteen minutes, but she nodded anyway. Her eyes needed a rest. Her brain needed a rest. She needed fresh air and a good coffee. And something to eat. Now that she had stopped working, Ruth realised her stomach was killing her. She had not eaten since breakfast and she was starving. Nodding to Calum, then, they headed down together to the Embankment.

.

Walking outside cleared Ruth's head better than anything else could have. Walking down towards Westminster, she and Calum spent a blissful five minutes not discussing the case or anything surrounding it. Calum bought her coffee and she bought him waffles and they both sat on a bench around the corner from Thames House, eating them. Calum joked lightly about the weather and about Ruth's mittens which, admittedly, were some of the woolliest mittens known to mankind. Ruth ate more than her fair share of the waffles. And the sauce.

They lasted a good ten minutes before the subject of Harry came up. And, when it did, it did not come in the way Ruth had expected.

"Can I ask you something personal and possibly incredibly inappropriate?" Calum asked, turning to her on their bench.

Ruth froze, with her coffee halfway to her lips.

"I take it this is not work-related?" she asked, hesitantly.

"Technically, it's kind of work-related."

Ruth turned her head, catching her colleague's eye.

Harry. This was about her and Harry. This was the moment she had been gearing herself up for, all day.

"If I don't want to answer, can I just ignore you?" she asked, tentatively, trying to swallow back her nerves and look vaguely in control.

Calum nodded.

Ruth took a slow breath.

"Okay, then," she nodded. "Go ahead."

A moment passed. Some people walking nearby trudged through the snow on front of their bench, footsteps causing soft wet noises against the ground. Beyond the pathway, the river rolled and churned over itself. Ruth watched it, over Calum's shoulder, trying to hold her nerve despite being headily out of her depth.

"Does Harry know that you have a job offer, from the Home Office?"

She blinked hard then turned.

"How the hell do _you_ know about that?" she asked, in complete surprise. How the hell could he know about that, she thought, internally. The Home Secretary, someone from HR his end and someone from HR her end were the only ones who knew and they were all bound by the Official Secrets Act from betraying details about Security Service employees. "It was supposed to be a blank transfer until I decided whether or not to accept!"

"It is blank and nobody said anything. The only reason I found out about it is that I know this girl, in HR," Calum admitted, a little shamefacedly, "and she mentioned that papers were drawn up for someone in Section D for a transfer to the Home Office. She didn't know who."

Ruth blinked, stunned, then turned her attention back out, across the river. Its steady, surging pattern was soothing on her eyes. Her heartbeat continued to thrum fast in her chest, however.

"Have you told anyone about this?" she asked Calum, nervously.

"No," her colleague answered, firmly, "not anyone. Not Harry," he added, tilting his head to catch her eye.

She glanced over at him, relived and ashamed in one.

"Thank you."

"So it is you, then?"

"Yes," she nodded. "How did you know?"

"I narrowed the entire staff down who it could be, then I tested a couple of theories," he shrugged. "At the end of the day, you were the only one who fit the profile and the job requirement and could have possible motivation for leaving."

Ruth sighed.

It felt strange for someone to know about the job offer – especially for them to have found out on the same day as finding out about her and Harry. Bad and good at the same time. Good because all of her secrets were, to some degree, out in the open and, as exposed as she felt by it, she could not help but feel a little relieved too. Bad because now Calum knew that she was still withholding this secret from Harry – and that she was considering leaving them all.

"Are you going to accept the offer?" her colleague asked, after she had remained silent for a minute or so.

"I don't know," Ruth admitted. "I love my job, but there are advantages to going..."

"Harry?" Calum asked, softly.

Ruth focussed her eyes out, on the water, not trusting herself to look at Calum without blushing scarlet.

"Not really."

"Can't be easy dating the boss."

"Actually, it's remarkably easy."

Calum was quiet for a moment and Ruth felt briefly liberated. She had never overtly shared her feelings about Harry to anyone. She had implied, once or twice, that they meant a lot more to each other than colleagues, but never anything more intimate. She was not sure why she felt like sharing with Calum, now – they had only known each other for just a little less than a year – but she did feel like sharing and, she supposed, that was a good thing. It was surely a step forwards, a step towards making the situation with Harry finally feel real.

"He's good at keeping it all separate," she told her colleague, blushing and looking down at her woollen mittens. "He really is. He has been fantastic, actually."

Calum nodded, accepting her answer, and a minute passed, in almost complete silence. They both watched the morning continue around them, people walking back and forth to work, people gathering for tea breaks outside office buildings, halting to buy coffee from the little stalls on their way to other destinations, about the place. Lambeth bridge glistened dully in the grey winter light.

Eventually, Ruth's colleague seemed to reach some culmination of his internal thoughts and turned to her, frowning slightly in the cold air.

"So, if Harry's not a problem, why do you want to leave?" he asked, sounding genuinely confused.

Ruth screwed up her face.

"I don't even know that I do want to leave, yet," she told him, exasperatedly. "But, if I do end up leaving, it won't be to get away from anything – especially not this job or this team – but, rather, to do something that I had always planned on doing. Working for MI5 was never my intention, you know," she told Calum, with a little smile. "I was just seconded here to spy on Harry and never left."

"I think your clever manipulation of HR's mainframe helped out with the not leaving bit," Calum pointed out.

Ruth blushed.

She didn't know anyone knew about that. Then again, Calum seemed to make it his business to slink around amongst them all, gathering pieces of information. It was probably what made him such a bloody efficient spook, she thought darkly. It was what Harry did, too. He gathered bits and pieces and held them close to his chest until they could be of maximum efficiency. She did not dare think what _he_ knew about her.

"I just redirected their mail a little," she defended her actions of several years ago, softly. "If Harry had wanted rid then he would have paid more attention to GCHQ's lack of correspondence. I didn't do anything really wrong. I just liked Section D. I didn't want to leave."

Another silence.

"So, what did Towers offer you, to change your mind?" Calum asked, then realised what his question sounded like and quickly added, "not that I think money would sway you. I meant, what would your job title be? What would you be doing, for him?"

"Home Office Security liaison." Finally feeling a bit braver, talking about facts and not Harry and emotion, turned to face her colleague. "I would still be on the Grid and see the team quite routinely and I'd be liaising with Special Branch and Six as well. It's a great offer, really. I am just not quite sure what to do yet... and I didn't want to tell anyone until I had either accepted or declined."

"Even Harry?"

"How do you even know that I've not told him?" Ruth asked, with a frown.

"I brought it to him, that someone wanted to transfer out, a couple days ago. He told me to look into it rather than drop it." Calum shrugged. "If he'd known it was you, he would have steered me away. He doesn't suspect you," the younger officer added, in soft assurance. "I don't think he has any idea."

"Great..." she looked away again, guilt sinking through her. "That makes me feel much better."

Beside them, the river churned past, looking a little more murky and grey than usual under the murky grey sky. The overnight blizzard had not faded quite as well as the weather reports had predicted. Snow still stained the banks and streets and, every now and then, a large chunk of ice would float past, along the Thames, from somewhere colder upstream. As Ruth palmed her coffee cup, watching the city through the steam that emanated from it.

How would Harry would have reacted, she wondered, if he had found out about her job offer from Calum Reid? It would not have gone down well – that much she knew. He hated being kept in the dark. And, even if she had not overtly lied, that was exactly what she was doing. He deserved to know, she berated herself, angrily. He told her things when he could. She needed to reciprocate. She needed to listen to her own words. He was doing everything he could to keep their lives running smoothly – not to let work adversely affect them or let them adversely affect work – she had to do her bit too.

"Why haven't you told him?" Calum asked, after a moment, as he scrunched up their napkins that came with their waffles and stuffed them back inside the box.

Ruth grimaced.

"I don't know..." She had no idea why, but she just couldn't. She hated making decisions and making decisions with someone watching was somehow even worse. She just wanted to know what to do before she broached the subject with Harry. She just wanted to be prepared.

"He's going to ask me what I've found, sooner or later," Calum gently pointed out. "And I'm not entirely comfortable with lying to him."

Ruth looked over.

"I know and I'm not asking you to," she told him, quickly, then heaved a heavy sigh. "I'll tell him."

"Soon?" Calum questioned gently, before adding; "It really is best he hears it from you, you know."

"I know and I will. Soon," Ruth confirmed, with a little smile at the fondness in Calum's eyes. He really was trying to help. He had kept this from Harry. He had come to her directly but not confrontationally. He had bought her waffles and coffee. "Thank you for coffee," she told him softly.

"No problem. Thought it was best to get started on the brownnosing a bit early," he joked, his tone a little more informal now they had finished the most fraught portion of their conversation. "You are going to be my boss, if you accept this offer, after all."

Ruth chuckled.

"Even if I accept, I won't be your boss."

Calum wrinkled his nose. "Technically, you would be. I answer to Harry, Harry answers to the Home Secretary, and you would be advising the Home Secretary." He shot her a little smile. "Technically, you would be my boss."

Technically, she would, Ruth knew. Technically, she would have political power above anyone on the Grid and would liaise with Harry directly. That, in itself, was part of the issue of whether or not she could actually take the job. Now that she and Harry were together, did that mean she was compromised? Should she really tell the Home Secretary? Would Towers mind that his Security Advisor, who was supposed to be impartial and working for the party, was sleeping with a senior Intelligence official? It was a question she was going to have to ask him, once she decided what she wanted to do about the offer.

Giving another sigh, she turned to Calum, asking softly;

"What would you do? Would you take it?"

Calum looked genuinely surprised to have been asked.

"I don't know," he said, after a few moments of quiet contemplation. "It's hard to put myself in your shoes. All I've ever strived for, in my career, was a place in this department. I joined the Service to work counterterrorism and I missed countless other opportunities in advancement in other Sections just to get here. Harry's bloody picky about hiring field officers, you know. I had to suffer through two secondments to Six, a stint in Section A, six months running errands for C and two rejections to my application before I could even be considered."

"I thought Erin brought you in?" Ruth frowned.

"Hey," Calum gave her a warning finger-shake. "Erin might have been the one to eventually get me in the door, but Harry re-interviewed everyone who Erin assigned, once he was back, and you should have heard the interrogation he put me through!"

Ruth laughed softly.

"He's always been odd about hiring new people. I remember when he was interviewing for Dimitri's position. He had about thirty-odd applicants through his office and half of them looked like they were about to cry, by the time they came out of the meeting room."

"What a charmer."

"I suppose he can be, sometimes," Ruth admitted, unable not to give a little smile as her stomach filled with warmth.

A pause.

"Ruth?"

Ruth felt her younger colleague's eyes dart across her, smile growing around his mouth, and felt her worry grow again.

"Yes?"

"Can I ask something else personal and possibly incredibly inappropriate?"

She winced. "That sounds ominous, but yes."

"What is Harry like, on a date?"

A tide of laughter surged through her.

What was Harry like on a date? It was undoubtedly one of the things they must wonder. He kept such a veil between what he was like, inside, and his professional front that Ruth had had no idea, herself, what he would be like to know on a personal basis, before she had been on a date with him. What it was that was different about work Harry and date Harry, she was not entirely sure. He still focussed his attention solely on the subject matter at hand. He still talked with that same degree of calm self-assuredness. But, she supposed, he did soften a little. He was a little gentler when he talked to her. His eyes were a little warmer than he ever let them get, on the Grid. He was sweet. He was funny.

"He doesn't interrogate me," she chuckled, at Calum, "if that's what you mean."

"I know he mustn't, but I always imagine him asking about your day, briefing room style."

Ruth giggled again.

"Honestly, he's nothing like it. We just... talk."

"Harry, doing small talk?" Calum pulled a face.

Ruth laughed loudly, blushing and smiling at the same time.

"Well, we don't really do small talk," she admitted, after somehow managing to compose herself, "but I suppose we've known each other for a long time."

Calum smiled, looking back out over the water.

A moment or two passed.

"I'm glad that you two have managed to get past the eternal boy-meets-girl phase," he told her, sincerely.

A little warmed, Ruth smiled at him.

"Me too."

"All of us are, you know. All the team."

"Thank you."

"It must be a relief."

"How?"

"It must make work a little less awkward."

"I suppose it does."

"Got to be good not to have seven years worth of sexual tension sitting on your shoulders either, eh?"

Ruth winced.

"And, as per usual, you've gone too far..."

Calum grinned to himself.

"Sorry."

Ruth gave a little roll of her eyes, trying valiantly to make her cheeks return to a normal colour, but unable to keep the slight smile from her lips.

They sat for a little while, taking in the cold view.

.

By the time they arrived back on the Grid, chaos had broken loose yet again. One of Calum's contacts from the Bradford operation had called in and, after a minor argument with Harry, he had managed to be extricated from helping with Tariq and Ruth's Wood case lead to head up north and sort it out. In the redistribution of staff that followed, Ruth found herself working with a rather over enthusiastic junior analyst and Erin – who was not best pleased with her lot in the situation.

Throwing dark looks at Harry's office and making snide comments about staffing insufficiencies, the Section Chief plodded through the work that Ruth shoved her way whilst Ruth, herself, returned to her strange array of information, seeking out a pattern amongst the endless notes and scribbles and interview transcripts. There seemed to be nothing.

It had just turned five o' clock, and she was considering calling it a day, when Tariq tripped headlong into her desk, knocking half of its contents to the floor.

"Tariq, for God's sake!" Ruth cried, in exasperation.

"No time," the young man interrupted her tirade as it was about to start. "Look at this!"

He slapped a piece of paper down on the wooden surface on front of her and Ruth pulled it towards her.

"What is this?" Ruth asked, looking down the numbers.

"That is a list of bank account numbers who Emily Wood has given money to, over the last year." The young techie was out of breath, clearly having run straight her from Section C's mainframe access point where he had been running an interesting (and somewhat illegal) array of traces and intercept software on a bank computer. "I found it marked under 'philanthropy' on outgoing payments. These nine are all charities," Tariq pointed, "but this one is a savings account, set up in her son's name."

Ruth frowned.

"So she is saving up for her son's future. What does that tell us?"

"It's an account they never gave us when we were doing our investigation," Tariq panted, "but it has had over a hundred thousand going through it in the last year, alone. We don't have the account numbers for outgoing payments, yet, but we do have the dates and they roughly match up with our assassination attempts."

Ruth's eyes widened.

"Who has access to this money?" she asked, anxiously.

"It's a bit like a trust fund, which won't be accessible to Todd until he is eighteen. Right now, mother has full legal control. Dad did not put his name down for tax reasons."

"Bugger," muttered Ruth, darkly. "Have you told Harry?"

"I was just about to-,"

Tariq was cut off, mid-sentence, by a ring on his phone. Lifting it to his ear, he chirped a quick greeting, babbled off several numbers and words that Ruth did not recognise – neither by themselves or in concert with one another – then gave a little start and turned to Ruth.

"I need your system."

"Okay."

She wheeled her chair back and not even bothering to ask if he needed her authorisation codes. When standing between a genius and his destination, it was best to move quickly.

Tariq tapped away madly for about thirty seconds, then leant back, turning the screen towards her.

"Okay, we're inside the account."

Ruth wheeled her chair back forwards and leant in.

"Is that...?"

"Fifty thousand pounds leaving, just out two hours ago."

"That's not good," Ruth thought aloud. "It could be another payment. Do you think its coincidence that it happened the morning after Torrance Wood announced his heading back to Shanghai?"

"I'd be willing to bet my years' pitiful salary that its not." Tariq tapped lower on the screen. "Payment went to a bank account registered to 'Renee Ferrer'. We're running it through our systems now. One of the Section C boys has contacted the bank and we're trying to get them to open their files, tell us when she started with them etcetera." Tariq turned to Ruth, frowning. "Do you think we should ask the assassin? He might know this contact."

"He'll tell us nothing," Ruth sighed, "but I suppose we should try anyway. You should go tell Harry and I should call Zoe and Juliet Shaw. They spent weeks trawling through the criminal underworld in the area. They might know this new contact – if they are linked at all to the previous assassins."

"Meanwhile, we'd better get CO19 to Wood's house," Tariq suggested.

Ruth nodded.

"Go tell Harry," she told the young man. "I'll print this out, call the safehouse and then join you."

Tariq turned and hared off, while Ruth pressed print and grabbed her phone simultaneously. Tapping in the number of the man in charge of security on Zoe and Juliet's Chelsea safehouse, Ruth raised the phone to her ear as she strode quickly over to the photocopier. She tapped Erin on the shoulder as she went.

"New information," she murmured to her Section Chief, as the phone rang in her ear. "Harry's office, now."

Erin nodded and stood up, grabbing Dimitri on her way over.

Ruth waited by the photocopier, tapping her foot impatiently. The security officer answered the phone before it was done printing. Citing her authorisation, she asked him to get Juliet and Zoe to the phone as quickly as was humanely possible. Zoe was the first to appear, just seconds later.

"God, Ruth, what's happened?" she asked, sounding worried. "Brian made it sound like someone had died."

"Did Harry appraise you and Juliet of the situation this morning?" Ruth asked, her words short and quick.

"Yes. Emily Wood is the suspect. She has connection with both assassins. I'm afraid we don't know any more about-."

"-Is Juliet there?"

"She's upstairs in her room. She's been in bed since she saw Harry, this morning. I've sent the guard up to fetch her."

"We have new information. A transaction on the account we think was used to pay the assassin. It was made just two hours ago," Ruth told her, hurriedly. "It could mean there is about to be another attempt on Torrance Wood's life."

"Emily Wood knows you're onto her?"

"How could she? It's more likely because he announced his intent to go back to Shanghai, yesterday evening," Ruth shook her head. Now was not even the time to get into that end of the mystery. "Zoe, I need to know if either you or Juliet know of any involvement Wood might have with a Renee Ferrer."

Silence sounded on the other end of the line.

Something in Ruth's gut told her that it was not silence merely for lack of answer. Her stomach suddenly felt cool, that creeping sense of foreboding crawling up her spine. She knew Zoe well. She knew what Zoe looked like when she was surprised and panicky. And she could somehow tell, just from the 'tone' of her silence, that Zoe was wearing that doe-in-the-headlights, startled and fixed expression right now.

"Zoe?" she asked, her apprehension growing with each passing silent second.

"Renee..." Zoe eventually spoke, clearing her throat. Her voice was harsh. Empty. Devastated. "Renee Ferrer is one of Juliet's aliases. It was the name she was living under when we first met."

Ruth closed her eyes as the words sunk home.

"Zoe? Where is Juliet now?"

A pause.

Ruth heard her walking across hard tile, presumably out of the kitchen and into the hallway of the big Chelsea safehouse. She heard the shouting of the guards upstairs. She heard the sound of doors slamming and people searching.

"Zoe?" she asked, quietly.

"I... I don't know."

.


	28. Chapter 28

.

_Chapter 28 – Proof_

.

After returning from his visit to Juliet and Zoe's safehouse, Harry spent the rest of the afternoon in his office, on the phone. In addition to what the team were running up, their new lead over Emily Wood, he had other pressures weighing down his shoulders. Firstly came staffing problems. Deborah Langham was nipping at his heels, following the department's latest performance review. She recommended the addition of a new junior analyst and two new junior field officers to the team but the process for selecting them was far too time-consuming for Harry even to consider, right now. He was simply too busy. They were up to their ears in threat assessments. Luckily, none of them were immediate enough to disturb their lead today but tomorrow they would have to start redistributing staff again. Ruth and Tariq would not be pleased, Harry thought, as he palmed through a report sent over from Section A – some intelligence about a massive shipment of drugs, discovered heading into Hull from the Netherlands. It meant that, if they had not found anything on Emily Wood by tomorrow, she would get away scot free.

Running a hand over his tired head, Harry was just considering whether to chance the Grid and the inevitable questions and requests that would assault him to get a cup of coffee when the phone began to ring on the desk beside him. Having just set it down, not two minutes previous, he fixed it with a very long-suffering look before picking it up and raising the handset to his ear. The extension was the switchboard. This was undoubtedly someone in the field. Perhaps Calum, having sorted out his problem with the Bradford operation. Probably something important.

"Harry Pearce," he greeted them with his own name – an old standby for when he had absolutely no energy left to offer anything else.

"Sir, this is Officer Andrews," a young voice said, then reeled off an authorisation number which he probably did not know that he had to confirm again, once past the switchboard. A new officer, Harry figured, closing his eyes slightly and taking a moment to bolster his already strained patience. "I am outside safehouse Q7 doing a routine check but my superior officer is not answering and the door is ajar. I can't get through to my ranking superior, at Headquarters, because he is in a meeting and I need authorisation to take myself and my partner inside."

Harry frowned. Why was he being asked?

"Sir, your department brought the prisoner in," the young officer reminded him. "Your authorisation should be enough."

His prisoner. His authorisation.

...His assassin.

Harry felt his stomach cool, suddenly, anxiety flushing through him. The situation the young officer had described did not sound like a good one. The men who were supposed to be guarding Juliet and Zoe's assassin were not answering their phones. The safehouse looked as if it had been broken into and left in a hurry. And, this had all happened just hours after Torrance Wood had announced he was going back to Shanghai. Their lead on Emily Wood was suddenly looking even more likely. And even if it wasn't the wife, Harry thought darkly, whomever was behind all of this now had an assassin and motivation to end Wood quickly before he skipped town.

"You have clearance to go," he told the young officer, "but keep the line open. I'd rather hear what is going on live. Do I need to send in backup?" he asked, eyes slipping out onto the Grid and towards Ruth and Tariq who were leaning over her desk, frowning at something or another.

"No, sir. I've already called an armed unit. They're on their way."

"I have to advise you to wait until they arrive," Harry mentioned, knowing full well that the young officers would not hold off on entering the building. He certainly wouldn't, in their situation. Their team members were inside, perhaps injured, perhaps dead, and waiting was how field work _worked_. You were a unit. You were part of a team. You went in, no matter what.

"Yes, sir," the young man confirmed that he had heard Harry's instruction, then added, "I'm switching to comms."

And with that his voice was gone and Harry was treated to the odd shuffling noise of men moving through the building.

The comms microphone was muffled and punctuated by the rough noise of static. Through it, however, he could hear the snick of a door and the sound of footsteps in a hallway. Tiles. Wood. Laminate flooring. Then no footsteps. Then carpeted stairs and creaking floorboards. He heard two checks. He heard the downstairs cleared and then move on to the top of the house. He heard slightly ragged, nervous breathing as the young officer approached the back rooms, where the assassin had been kept. He heard the door being kicked in and the swearing and faster movement. He heard them asking someone if they were okay. He heard two voices become four.

"Status?" he asked, softly.

"Two guards are unharmed, bound and gagged," young officer Andrews' voice came back, after a moment or so of shuffling and scraping on the microphone. "They report they were taken out with gas canisters by someone who managed to get into the building undetected. The alarm system was disarmed and the CCTV was cut from inside but no distress signals were sent out. Whoever did this is good," he offered, unhelpfully.

"And our prisoner?" Harry asked, not daring to hope.

"Gone. Blood marks on the stairs and in the room he was being held. Not enough for him to be dead but enough to suggest he put up a hell of a fight. Looks like he wasn't taken by a friendly."

Harry sighed, running his hand over his face again.

"I'm sending forensics in with the backup team. Cordon the place off, double check everything and get your men to medical. I want detailed descriptions of everything that happened," Harry commended, firmly. "Down to the minute," he added, with just a little threat in his voice. "If we don't find out who took this man, things could end very badly."

"I'll be in touch," the young officer signed off, the click on the phone sounding almost precisely as Tariq barged through Harry's door.

"Tariq!" the Section Head griped, mind still revolving around this new information and its implications to his operation. "Have you joined Ruth's campaign to drive me slowly insane? That door is not for aesthetic purposes!"

"Sorry, boss, I have something."

_Social problems, a lax approach to formal attire, an irritating habit of barging in when he was not entirely wanted? _

"What?" Harry asked, narrowing his eyes at the young man.

"Fifty thousand just left an account under Emily Wood's control. We didn't see it the first time around because neither parent disclosed and it is a saving account for a minor. It didn't come up in our investigations."

Harry stared.

"Emily Wood just paid someone fifty thousand pounds?"

"Yes," Tariq nodded, eyes big and innocent. "Well, two hours ago."

Two hours gave someone plenty of time to break into a safehouse and remove an assassin, thought Harry, biting his inner lip in irritation. If only they had gotten to the bank account sooner. Then they would have had time to stop whomever was paid to go to Torrance Wood and there wouldn't be this horrible half-pain in his chest, right now, as he thought about the distance between where CO19 were stationed and the Consul's Mayfair house.

As he was thinking, Erin and Dimitri tumbled into the room, looking a little lost.

"What's going on? Ruth told us we had a lead."

"Apparently," Harry growled, "Emily Wood has just paid someone fifty thousand pounds and our assassin has gone spectacularly missing from his safehouse holding cell."

"What?" asked Tariq, reacting to the second piece of information.

Erin and Dimitri looked from Harry to Tariq.

"The assassin's missing?" the techie asked.

"I just found out a few minutes ago," Harry sighed. "I'm waiting for confirmation, but he seems to have been 'extracted' from the building."

"Shit. That could mean-,"

"-that the money went to freeing him," Harry finished. "Yes. It certainly looks that way."

"Or using him," Erin pointed out, a little darkly.

Harry nodded.

"I'll call CO19," his Section Chief nodded.

She was just turning, about to head from the room, when loud footsteps in the hall announced Ruth's arrival in the doorway.

"Renee Ferrer is Juliet Shaw!" she exclaimed, striding past the others and slapping a piece of paper down on Harry's desk.

Harry snatched it up.

"What on earth-?"

"-The bank account paid into by Emily Wood belongs to a 'Renee Ferrer'," she announced, punching two numbers into her phone and then flipping Harry's off the cradle when the transfer rang through. "As it turns out, Renee Ferrer happens to be a lot closer than we had thought. Or, she was until she went missing from her safehouse earlier this morning, having been paid fifty thousand pounds." Pressing speaker, she directed her next comment down at the phone. "Zoe, explain," she demanded.

Silence reigned.

Harry looked up to Ruth, then down at the phone again, his body now well and truly wracked with adrenaline and anxiety.

"Zoe?" he asked, sharply.

"Renee Ferrer is an alias Juliet was using when I met her..." Zoe's voice emanated from the speakers, tiny and worried. "It was linked to several accounts in Brazil. I thought she burnt it."

"Where is she, Zoe?" Harry asked, his tone darkening even further.

"No one's seen her since you left this morning. She went up to her room, saying she didn't feel well. We thought she was in there ever since." Zoe paused, her tone somewhere between ashamed and abjectly terrified. "Security can't find a trace of how she got out, but that is definitely one of her aliases and she's had since you left, this morning to get where she is going."

When he left this morning...

Harry swallowed, feeling trepidation sink through him.

...when he told them about their new intelligence about Emily Wood.

This was bad. Juliet Shaw was Renee Ferrer, and linked with a woman who hired assassins and ordered murder. Emily Wood had paid her fifty thousand pounds... and what wouldn't Juliet Shaw do, to escape jail with fifty thousand pounds, he wondered, feeling almost sick. This was everything he had feared would happen and more. She had been involved in this from the start – perhaps since she had found out about the assassin, perhaps before. What on earth her plan was was still beyond Harry. What possible advantage could there be to bringing them the assassin? What was she trying to achieve? What was she going to do...?

"Juliet is definitely missing?" he asked, slowly.

Ruth nodded, her eyes wide and somewhat panicked.

"We don't know when she went missing?"

"She's not been seen since-,"

"-I left this morning. Yes, thank you Ruth, I understood that bit the first time."

Ruth flinched slightly and the others exchanged a slight look.

Harry corrected himself, sending her an apologetic glance before giving a sigh and continuing.

"Do we have CO19 on the way to Torrance Wood's house?" he asked Erin.

"I'll get on it now," his Section Chief nodded, making towards the door.

Harry's voice caught her on the way out.

"You and Dimitri get a car," he instructed. "I'll meet you at the front in three minutes."

Erin nodded and she and Dimitri strode away.

Harry turned to Ruth and Tariq.

"Get Zoe in here now," he told them. "If I need someone to talk Juliet down off a sniper's ledge then it should be her self-professed best buddy."

"She wouldn't do that!" Zoe's voice insisted, from the other end of the phone line. "I know this looks bad, right now, and she doesn't want to go to jail, but she wouldn't go so far as to kill an innocen-,"

Harry reached over and pressed in the 'off' button, picking up the handset and handing it to Ruth. Whatever he believed Juliet had done – and he could not help but share Zoe's instinctive disbelief, because Juliet was many things but not a mercenary assassin – he did not feel ready to hear Zoe justify it, right now. Right now was not the moment for hasty and possibly inaccurate suppositions, or suppositions of any sort. Right now was the moment to get armed guards to Consul Wood's house and make sure that the man they were supposed to be protecting was not going to get shot by the woman he had not thrown in jail when he had the chance. Right now was not about solving anything, it was about damage limitation. Figuring out what on earth was going on came later.

"Try and confirm that Emily Wood is the only one who could have paid from this account," he asked Ruth, meeting her blue eyes and feeling just momentarily calmed by them. "And see if we can link any of the receiving accounts to our assassins. It's a long shot, but it would make our case solid."

"I can try and find Juliet using gait-analysis," Tariq told him. "But I think that's a long shot too."

"Check for car plates cropping up in the areas around both safehouses," Harry advised, instead. "Juliet is not the sort to jump ship before she has a lifeboat to get away in," he added, "but I doubt that she still knows enough people in the area to sort out two cars on such short notice."

"I'll get on it," the young techie nodded and bounded away.

Harry and Ruth were left alone.

"Do you think she'd do it?" Ruth asked, after a few seconds.

"Juliet?"

"Yes."

"I don't know," Harry answered, honestly. "I'd like to think she wouldn't, but I have been invariably wrong about her, in the past."

"Zoe says she's probably just skipped town."

"And miss out on the other fifty grand she will get, when she carries out her contract?"

"Maybe fifty is enough," Ruth suggested. "Or maybe she figured that, since we knew about Emily Wood and she would be stopped before any further payments, that it was not worth staying."

Harry watched the woman on front of him, feeling irresistibly drawn to her.

He needed to go. He wanted to stay.

"Call me if anything changes," he told her, nodding to the door. "I should go. Consuls to save, people to terrorise."

"You do know that is not actually the definition of 'counter terrorism?" she joked, half-heartedly.

Harry smiled, despite himself, despite the situation.

"I know. I'll check in once everything's under control and the perimeter is secure."

Ruth nodded then, as if breaking through some internal barrier, suddenly reached out and slipped her hand around his arm, fingers digging in quite insistently.

"Be careful," she murmured, softly.

Harry felt a rush of gratitude and warmth, despite the anxiety coursing through his system.

"I will," he told her, giving her a soft squeeze back before moving swiftly on. "I have to go."

She nodded and let her hand slip free.

Giving her just a tiny twitch of a smile, he turned and headed towards the Grid's great glass doors.

.

Arriving at Consul Torrance Wood's house, they were thrown into the chaos of CO19, security personnel and the panic of the Consul Wood's extended family. Armed policemen had swarmed the house, not five minutes before Harry and Erin arrived, and were currently liaising with security over a search for the grounds. Outside, beyond the perimeter of the street, press had swarmed in again, eager for a glimpse of some sort of scandal. Inside, Torrance Wood had been confined to the living room with his wife, who was crying and throwing herself melodramatically around her husband's shoulders, demanding that she see her son, who was being kept separate. The boy had been found hiding in an upstairs cupboard, with his hands planted firmly over his ears, trying to block the noise of the invasion out. While Harry did not see this as a particularly suspicious thing for a shell-shocked fifteen year old to be doing, CO19 disagreed and he was being subject to interrogation, through in the kitchen, the team arrived.

Consul Wood, for all of it, was coping rather well. When Harry paced into the living room, his Section Chief in tow, he greeted him with a weary handshake and an offer of a cup of tea. Harry declined the offer and began to outline what was going on to the somewhat overcome politician, stressing the precarious nature of the situation.

"We don't know where the assassin is, or who exactly is behind this." His eyes drifted over onto Emily Wood as he spoke. It had been unanimously agreed to keep her within their sights but not confront the nature of her involvement until the Home Secretary arrived. "But we have a missing asset and a missing assassin and an open threat on your head. We need to be safe rather than sorry."

Once the Consul had assured Harry that he understood, Harry handed him over to Erin, who was far better at dealing with slightly hysterical assassination-attempt victims, and headed back out into the hall. As he walked, he did a check on personnel. Two armed junior officers, from the Tactical Assault Unit. One head security officer, from Torrance Wood's staff, and two members of CO19 – discussing CCTV angles around the house compound with frowns up on their faces. Erin and Dimtri. Himself. Another security guard, on the stairs, looking utterly terrified by the turn of events.

Moving past the frightened young guard, Harry stepped out into the hall and made a quick call in to Ruth, to tell her that they had arrived and that everything was under control. In return, she told him that she had Zoe on the Grid, had no sign of Juliet and no confirmed CCTV image of either Juliet or the assassin leaving the safehouse – though there was a highly probably match of a man and a woman, fitting the description, both wearing hats pulled down over their faces and the man walking with a limp. They were gone almost two and a half hours ago, Ruth told him, just before the payment was made. It was possible, she pointed out, that Emily had simply paid Juliet to remove all connection between herself and the assassin, and that there was no real threat to Torrance Wood at all.

Harry remained the cynic, commenting that there was absolutely no reason to pay someone that amount of money to cover something up and then not ask them to finish the job. And, though Zoe's belief in Juliet's innocence made him feel warm and fuzzy inside, he was still going to keep Torrance Wood away from windows with a direct line of sight.

Staring at the ornate silk wallpaper in the hallway (and wondering whether it was a requisite character trait, for rich people to have bad taste), Harry ran through several other suggestions, for how to find their fugitive asset and assassin, each sounding more unlikely than the last – even to his own ears. Eventually, a commotion outside announced the Home Secretary's arrival and he ended the call, with instruction for Ruth to message Erin if there were any changes. Then, moving further down the hall, Harry awaited Towers' entrance.

As eager as he was, to get Towers in and discussion underway, he was loathe to risk being sighted by the seething mass of press who had appeared on the street, within five minutes of CO19 surrounding the building. The last thing someone in his position needed was to be pictured in what was bound to be a front-page spread. Staying half concealed in the shadow of one of the hall's many doorways, then, Harry watched from a distance as William Towers was shoehorned inside by a PA and two security men, and waited until the door was closed before stepping out and beckoning the politician over.

The two officials met with a quiet greeting and the cursory muttered obscenities about the media. Weary of stalling, Harry rattled off an update of the situation, giving Towers the requisite moment to disbelief that Juliet could have escaped from an MI5 safehouse and then liberated their assassin from another, before moving onto the subject of the Consul's wife. As the first accusatory words left his lips, Towers reacted exactly as Harry had expected.

"Now, just wait a minute, Harry," his face crumpled into a frown. "You cannot seriously be suggesting that Emily is behind any of this?"

Harry sighed.

This was going to be even more difficult than he had thought. He had the proof – not great proof, but proof that would take a while for them to discount and, therefore, give him time to find more – but Emily Wood was a well known and respected member of society. Though she was not greatly influential, in comparison with some other politician's wives, she was still involved in enough philanthropic ventures to paint herself in a certain light. And women of that light were well known not to kill their husbands. This was what Harry would be fighting against, to have his tale heard. This was the irrational trust that people had, out in the real world, which he would have to destroy.

"We have proof," he told the Home Secretary, "that she paid large sums of money, from her son's savings account to two separate private accounts, around both the time of the embassy bombing and the attempt on Torrance Wood once he was back in London. She is the only one with access to the account," he stressed, "and she did not disclose its existence when we originally questioned her. Even if our intelligence is misleading, she is guilty of withholding evidence."

"This must be a mistake!" Towers exclaimed, looking disbelieving. "I've known Emily for nearly twenty years – she is just not capable of this."

"There is a need for further examination," Harry stated, blunt and diplomatically. There was no way of making the Home Secretary agree with him on this. All he could do was state the situation, state what the law said he was allowed to respond with, and carry that out whilst hoping that more evidence came along in the meantime... and that Juliet did not find some way to subvert to CO19 teams, one MI5 Tactical Assault Unit and the assembled throng of Consul Wood's private security firm. "I need to take her in for questioning."

"Bloody hell, Harry," Towers grumbled, "you can't!"

"I need to."

"Torrance Wood one of the Prime Minster's closest friends," the Home Secretary growled, lowering his voice so that the people who had travelled inside with him, who had moved further down the hall to give the two senior officials space to talk, could not hear. "His wife cannot be paraded through the streets in handcuffs. Can you imagine the impact that would have on the party? And right now, with that other story breaking?" he added, referring to some scandal which had splayed across the morning tabloids. "It would be a disaster!"

Despite thinking that party PR was not really his concern, Harry assured him that he would not be parading Emily Wood through the street in handcuffs.

"My people can take her surreptitiously by the back exit," he told Towers. "We can run with the story that she was not in, when the threat was made on the Consul's life, that she is currently seeking refuge at a friend's house, with her son, while the investigation wraps up."

"Surreptitiously through the back? Are you mad? This is not happening. Torrance Wood is a well respected-,"

"Torrance Wood," Harry interrupted, "could be the bloody King of Spain, for all I care." He fixed the man opposite him with a steely glare, irritation well and truly piqued, now. Towers could be a stubborn ass. The only way to deal with it was to be even more of a stubborn ass. "I work for a Service bound to protect the people of this country. I do not serve a party agenda."

"Spare me the platitudes, Harry. You are here to keep the peace and the fall out of this could be-,"

"Astronomical," Harry agreed, "considering the deals he is working on, in Shanghai. Believe me, Home Secretary, I understand the need for secrecy."

Towers gritted his teeth.

"But," Harry continued, "it is necessary. The alternative, after all, is doing nothing – waiting until our proof on Emily Wood is beyond any reasonable doubt whilst an assassin runs free around London with a fifty-thousand reasons to blow Torrance Wood from the water."

"I thought the assassin was already paid?"

"Half first, half later." Harry explained, with a little movement of impatience. _Had Towers really never seen a spy thriller_? "That's how it works."

Towers exhaled slowly, looking Harry up and down. Assessing, no doubt, the hiding he was going to receive, from his party superiors, should this all go badly. Not that he really had a choice to make, thought Harry, watching him back. If he told Harry to back off and Emily Wood did end up responsible – and the fact that Towers was even considering she might be made Harry increasingly sure that she was – then they would have far more than a political scandal on his hands. He would have a dead Consul and several energy deals which would founder, without Wood's name on the negotiating table. Energy deals which high-level names, in the government, would be very distressed about losing, seeing as they cemented their country's fuel alliance with a world superpower for the next fifteen years.

"I need to take her in," he stressed again, a little more gently, this time.

Towers looked unconvinced. Still a little confused.

Decisions, decisions.

"If she's not responsible, you can have my resignation," Harry pointed out.

"If she's not responsible, I will turn you on a spit," Towers retorted, a little shortly. Silence followed his pronouncement and both men watched each other a while longer. Harry could see the decision forming in the Home Secretary's eyes before it reached his lips. "Right," Towers eventually sighed, head swinging towards the door of the living room. "I suppose I don't have much of a choice in this, do I?"

"I'll try and make it sound like we need her to answer some questions, to clear her name."

"But you are sure of this?" A frown, "because it really does not sound like Emily. To start with," Towers said, with a wrinkled nose, "she is far too clever to have hired those three idiots who accidentally blew themselves up, trying to bomb the embassy."

Harry nodded, slowly, an idea beginning to take hold in the back of his head; an idea which had been growing, subconsciously, all the way through the last day, as Ruth and the rest of the team brought him snippets and pieces of information.

Emily Wood was too clever for the first failed assassination. He had read her file and background checks. She had been well-educated and succeeded both academically and in the workplace, before she married Wood. She was a smart woman – whatever other qualities she had which made her want to kill her husband. The first assassination attempt did not fit her MO. In fact, Harry thought, the first attack did not seem to fit _any_ woman's MO. The second, on the other hand, was almost perfect. A sniper, from long-distance. Clean. Neat. An almost-success where the embassy bombing had been ridiculous failure. They were two completely different attacks.

"We should go and speak to them," Towers stated.

Harry nodded but was prevented from making any comment by Erin Watts padding over, phone raised and a look of relief spread across her face.

"Erin?"

"Ruth called," she told him, upon arrival at his side. "We have contact with Juliet Shaw."

.


	29. Chapter 29

.

_Chapter 29 – Wolf in the Fold_

.

Back on the Grid, Ruth was in panic mode.

In one hand, she held Tariq's report, with the details of what they already knew about Emily Wood, and in the other she held the phone cradled to her cheek. Juliet Shaw's voice vibrated from its speaker; a woman Ruth had always been terrified of. A woman she now had to face, on her own, in order to solve this problem.

Of the central team, only she had been left at headquarters, amid the crises of the evening. Harry was at the Consul's home. Erin and Dimitri were with him. Calum was up north, trying to deal with a problem in his Bradford operation. Tariq was flitting between Sections C and D, but was up to his ears in a complicated hack into the Wood's bank accounts and could not possibly help her. All of this meant that Ruth was in charge, for the moment, and that she had a trio of junior analysts, a technical officer and three administration assistants to direct onto whatever tasks she saw fit. The problem was, she simply did not have enough hands or vocal chords to coordinate them all at once – at least, not while trying to contact Harry and conduct her phone call with Juliet Shaw.

The terrified ex-colleague, at her shoulder, was not helping.

"Let me speak to her!" Zoe asked, for what seemed the twentieth time in the last minute.

"I can't. Zoe, will you please sit down." Turning her attention back to the phone, she addressed the other voice in her ear. "And Juliet, I'm trying to transfer you to Harry but he's busy. You're going to have to make do with me for the moment."

"I'm not exactly swimming in time here," their escaped ex-asset drawled, down the line. "If I can't speak to Harry, then I'm going to have to go and you will never get your confirmation that I'm not hanging out some Mayfair window with a bolt-action sniper rifle."

Ruth's eyes fled across the room, seeking out Tariq – listening in to the conversation on a mobile headset while he dashed between his computer system here and the software he was running, one floor up. He shook his head hurriedly, in answer to her unasked question. They had no trace yet. She needed to keep Juliet on the phone a little while longer.

"Listen, Juliet, Harry is in a meeting with the Home Secretary," Ruth continued. "It is not possible to reach him. I've sent a call request to him and his Section Chief. He should call back any minute."

"I need to speak to him _now_."

"You can't speak to him," Ruth began, trying to think up another rationalisation of why she could not turn this over to her boss – hopefully something that did not explicitly state that they are trying to trace her location and send CO19 in, or something that involved telling Juliet where and what Harry was dealing with. Protocol dictated to give Juliet the least information possible. "He's in a meeting," she repeated. "If you want to speak to him you're going to have to hold the line just a moment."

"You silly girl – you just deduced that I'm a paid assassin," Juliet's voice stated, sounding exasperated. "Are you honestly expecting me to 'hold the line'?"

As much as the 'silly girl' comment stung, Ruth held her nerve.

"I figured you would not have called unless you wanted to speak to Harry," she stated, as neutrally as she could, "ergo you will hold the line in order to speak to him." Sliding her chair over, Ruth flipped through a stack of printouts detailing Emily Wood's outgoing transactions, frowning all the way. "While you're waiting, would you mind telling me the account details of your alias, Renee Ferrer, so that I can confirm that Emily Wood has been trying to kill her husband?"

She wasn't sure exactly where her bravery was coming from, considering she was still inwardly terrified of Juliet. Perhaps it was the remainder of her shock, from having aired her and Harry to the world – but she felt brave and steady. Her breathing was calm and deliberate. Her heart rate was not racing, like it had been when she had gone to meet Juliet at the Chelsea safehouse. For the first time, in their interactions, she was composed and in control. And she was determined to show it – and that she was actually good at her job, not just Harry's 'yes girl'.

"Juliet. You called for a reason," she told the older woman, calmly. "I'm assuming you have more information for us."

"I want to speak to Harry," Juliet's voice responded, a little haughtily. "And if you can't get me Harry then I want to speak to Zoe."

Zoe stepped forwards, holding out her hand but Ruth gave her a very short shake of the head.

"No," she said, quietly, covering the speaker of the phone in the vain hope that Juliet would not hear. "Not yet."

"She wants to speak to me," Zoe insisted.

"Her wants are not foremost among my concerns."

"You were always irritating," Juliet sniped, snidely, listening in over the phone line, "but now that you are sleeping with the boss you are absolutely intolerable."

Ruth felt her jaw tense, saw Tariq shift uneasily across the room. She tried to hold her tongue. It was a comment designed to get a reaction and she knew that Juliet was just trying to goad her into losing her cool and making her easier to manipulate, but it was so hard not to rise to the bait. For about three seconds, she convinced herself to hold silence, but then the urge to speak became too great. Ruth was just about to open her mouth and let off a slightly immature retort when her line bleeped, indicating that her call, to Harry's phone, was finally being returned.

"Hold on, please," she told Juliet, coolly. "I'm getting a call back."

Clearly weighing up the chances of speaking to Harry and Zoe against not having that opportunity, Juliet fell quiet and held the line.

Ruth punched in a number to send her call to Tariq's system and picked up the new call on her own phone.

"Hello?" she answered, glancing at the number on the screen and frowning. It was one of theirs but not the one she instantly recognised as Harry's.

"It's Erin," Erin Watts' voice replied. "What's happening?"

"I have Juliet Shaw on the phone."

"Shit." The tone on Erin's end shifted instantly from calm composure, knowing that the situation at the Woods' house was under control, to nervous tension. Ruth heard the Section Chief's heels begin to click off the hard floor of what she assumed to be Torrance Wood's Mayfair house, clearly off in search of their boss. "Do you have a trace on her yet?" she asked, on the way.

"Not yet. We're getting there," Ruth told her.

"Harry's just here, hang on." More footsteps sounded, then Ruth could hear male voices and Erin breaking in. She heard her name, then Juliet's, then there was a shuffling noise and Erin's voice came back onto the line. "I'm going to stick you on speaker," the Section Chief told Ruth. "Dimitri, Harry and the Home Secretary are with me."

Ruth felt a flutter of nerves.

"Okay."

The phone blipped and the tone on the other end turned slightly staticy. Ruth could suddenly hear the bustle of the house under raid, the footsteps of men in the background, the occasional shouting from the next room – presumably Emily and Torrance Wood arguing over something. She could hear the buzz of the press, outside.

Taking a deep breath, she launched into the report as if she were briefing Harry, on the Grid, trying to ignore that this was a vastly more important situation with her potential future boss listening in and Juliet Shaw on the line nearby.

"I have Juliet Shaw on the phone," she said, as steadily as she could. "She says she has proof of who hired her and our assassin, but she will only tell it to you."

Harry exhaled, sharply – a little noise of distaste and disbelief that Ruth had learnt so well, over the years.

"Put her through, Ruth."

"I'll remain on the line, with Zoe North," Ruth told him – adding, before he could object, "another of Juliet's conditions."

She could almost hear her boss nod.

"Understood."

Turning from the screen, Ruth nodded to Tariq across the room, who tapped several things into his computer and somehow joined the two separate calls. Turning to look up at Zoe, who was still hovering over her shoulder, Ruth held in the mute button as she gave her a short briefing.

"Don't speak unless spoken to," she warned the younger woman, "and let Juliet and Harry talk. I know you want to talk to her, and to know why she did what she did, but leave that until after their conversation is done. We need to find out what's going on. You need to let us do our jobs."

Zoe nodded, not looking entirely convinced. The phrase 'emotionally compromised' flitted across Ruth's mind, but she held her tongue. There was no point in stirring up more trouble than was necessary. She would let Zoe listen in to the call and mute her end if things got too out of order. Pressing speaker, then, she leant back in her chair.

"Harry, you should be connected. Juliet, go."

It felt odd to be directing the pair of them, but oddly satisfying, as both responded to her words like permission.

"Harry?" Juliet's voice came over, just a little softer than the tone she had used for Tariq and Ruth.

"What do you want, Juliet," Harry responded, his tone nowhere near soft. Sharp, in fact, was the word Ruth would have used. She knew, even without seeing him, how his face would be set. Brow furrowed, jaw tight, mouth set in a straight line. It was the face he wore when he was dealing with something extremely dire, or extremely personal. Ruth supposed Juliet fell under both categories. "Is this a call for demands?" he asked the woman on the other end of the line. "Are these terms for dropping your contract?"

The last comment was a little snide, but Juliet did not respond equally in manner. Instead, surprising all of them, she gave a little laugh.

"That will be unnecessary, Harry," she told him, still softly. "I won't be carrying out any contracts."

There was silence over the line. At the same time, Tariq waved an arm from the other side of the room, trying to get Ruth's attention. The analyst motioned for him to send whatever it was over to her station. Almost immediately, her computer 'pinged' and she opened the message, attachment spreading out into a map with a GPS location marked off. Juliet's location. Ruth pulled out her phone and tapped a message in to Harry's, hoping that he would check it without alerting to those on the call, on Erin's phone, what was going on. Juliet would know they had been tracing them but it had been a while since she had been with MI5 and she did not know that their abilities to track scrambled reusable cell phones had improved, somewhat, over the last five years.

Ruth held her breath but, whether he had received the message or not, Harry did not respond. He continued to talk to Juliet in the same cool manner as he had been before.

"Juliet, what on earth are you doing?" he asked. "What is this? Are you working for Emily Wood?"

"I was never given my client's name," Juliet answered, sounding – at least, to Ruth's ears – quite sincere. "I know she was a woman, however, from the phone call and I put two and two together. I also have the account number, from which I was paid, and the account number of our assassin. Between all of those details, I'm sure your lot can match it all up and identify your perpetrator."

Harry swore, quietly.

Ruth could understand his rage. If Juliet had given them the man's payment account number, they would have determined who had hired him within a matter of hours, rather than spending nearly two weeks sifting through the morass of information and eventually landing on Emily Wood. Their time could have been applied to more useful pursuits.

"Why the hell didn't you hand over the account number when you gave us the assassin?" her boss asked, angrily. "You said you had nothing more on him than his name and a few rumours. If you'd given us this, days of investigation could have been averted. Have you forgotten everything you ever stood for?"

"Not forgotten," Juliet's voice replied, quietly. "Just moved on."

Her voice was so empty that Ruth could not help but feel just a tiny bit sorry for her.

It was her unfailing weakness of Ruth's that she empathised with people. She had done so ever since she was a child. As a child, it had left her as the kid on the playground who always got blamed, at the end of a particularly mischievous game. In her later school years, it had left her as the girl who stood aside, as her friend pursued the boy she liked. Later still, it had made her the one to miss her leaver's ball, sitting on the front steps of the school and patting that same friend's back, because aforementioned boy had broken up with her. At University, she had managed to be a little stronger, but her attraction to broken things always got her into trouble in one way or another. She was an optimist. She had an overpowering urge to empathise and fix. It was probably what led her to what she was doing now, she mused, watching Zoe's face as she listened to Juliet over the telephone line.

"I am sorry for how this all turned out," the ex-spook was saying, to Harry. "I had to keep you on the trail long enough to negotiate Zoe's return while, at the same time, keeping you off the scent of who really tried to kill Torrance Wood for long enough for me to figure out my own escape. I'm sorry that I had to lie to you, about the assassin, but it was the way it had to be. The moment you had everything you would have kicked me to the curb and ignored Zoe's requests for citizenship."

Suddenly, to Ruth, everything that Juliet had asked for and done made sense. Her only real agenda, the only terms she had asked of Harry after returning to them, had been regarding Zoe's welfare and that of her family. She had never once made any real attempts to reduce her own punishment. At the time, Ruth had expected this to be because she had some friend or another, in the court system, who Juliet would pull out at the last minute. She had never expected Juliet to run. Then again, she had never expected that the love Juliet had shown for Zoe or the young girl, Dana, to be genuine either. To risk her neck by coming back here, when she only ever wanted to run away, meant that the devotion to her strange little family had been real. Or as real as a limited woman such as Juliet could be. As real as any spy was able.

A silence passed, over the phone line, then finally Harry spoke.

"You could have compromised this entire operation," his voice stated, quietly. He, too, seemed taken aback by this turn of events. While he had expressed disbelief that Juliet could be an assassin, Ruth knew that he considered her dangerous and a threat. He had been burned by her one too many times. He could never have seen this coming. "What if we had not made the connections we did?" he continued, with a slight stammer over the words. "What if Emily Wood had gone free?"

"I was keeping an eye on her," Juliet dismissed, with a hint of her old self coming back through. "And I was always going to give you the information once I had left. I just had to make sure everything was set first."

"How can you possibly be so selfish?" Harry asked, quietly.

Ruth felt her own stomach twist, slightly.

He was hurting.

Jealousy was a stupid emotion to be feeling, at such a time, but she felt it nonetheless. Rich and thick and vivid, it coursed through her. Harry was hurting because he had been betrayed by her again. Which meant he still cared enough about her to be betrayed. Which meant he still cared. In a way. She knew, of course, that it hardly affected her. He and Juliet had history, she told herself. They had hurt each other a dozen times over and never really had any closure, and that was why they still cared. It did not mean that Harry was any less hers, that he had loved others, in the past. It did not mean that. Still, it made her slightly uncomfortable. So much so that, when Zoe stepped forwards to speak to her friend, over the phone, Ruth let her, because it shifted the conversation away from Harry.

"You didn't have to do this, Juliet," the younger ex-spook spoke up, her voice wavering. "You were going to get reduced sentence. We had it all figured out."

"You had it figured out, Zoe darling," Juliet replied, and her voice was suddenly softer again. "I was never intending to stay. People like me aren't made for cages."

That was ironic, thought Ruth, (though she did not say it aloud), because cages were made for people like Juliet.

"Three years and you could have been free," Zoe exclaimed, shaking her head. Her eyes told Ruth that she honestly couldn't understand – that Juliet's actions were, in fact, completely her own and that Zoe had nothing to do with them. It was a relief, after the niggling doubts which had been filling Ruth all week. "You would have gone away for two years tops. And then you could have had a life."

"_You_ could have had a life," Juliet clarified a little sadly. "The stain on my record would never have rubbed out. I could never have had the life I wanted, if I stayed."

"...But you could have had us."

There was a silence, again, and Ruth heard Harry and Erin breathing, heard Juliet clear her throat, heard Zoe shift to lean closer behind.

"They would never have let you back, if you stayed in contact with me," Juliet told her, softly.

"Don't pretend you're doing this for me!" Zoe snarled, her voice loud and angry where, before, it had been sad and soft. "This is just you running away again."

Another silence sounded, loudly.

"They will take you back, Zoe. That's all that matters."

"And you?"

"I would have been left out in the cold, always watched. Now I can live the life I want to."

"But you're one of us," Zoe exclaimed, through a slight sniff of tears. "Whatever you've done, they couldn't just abandon-,"

"You don't let the wolf back into the fold," Juliet interrupted, calmly, and her words caught Ruth somewhere in the gut this time and stuck there. '_You don't let the wolf back into the fold_'; she was quite sure she would remember them until the end of her days. It was so emotive, so true to the feeling of being an outsider, always looking in. "I'm sorry, Zoe," Juliet sighed, down the phone line, "but that's the way it is."

There was another silence, where Ruth was painfully aware of everyone on the line holding their collective breaths, then Zoe began to cry and Harry suggested that maybe it was best if Ruth sent her to calm down somewhere else, for a while. Glancing sideways, Ruth could see that sending her anywhere else would cause a fight but, after turning and having a short discussion, managed to get her to sit down at the next desk. Assuring her that she could continue to listen to the call if she promised to refrain from talking, Ruth gave her a headset and a box of tissues and, after sending her an apologetic look, wheeled back over to her own desk. She arrived at the same time as Tariq, brandishing a printout of GPS coordinates. 'Police are three minutes out' was scrawled across the bottom in his ragged handwriting.

"Harry, we need Juliet's intel," Ruth pressed, turning back to the phone and interrupting Juliet and Harry, who were snapping over what Juliet had held back during their investigation. "Zoe has her passport. Her and her family are going to be safe. We need Juliet to tell us what she knows, now."

"Oh for goodness sake," the woman responded. "I wasn't going to skip out without giving you the goods. I'm a traitor, not an idiot. I don't want that woman running amok."

"We need to know-," Ruth began, but Juliet interrupted – all trace of emotion gone from her voice, now, and her tone as clipped and cool as it ever had been. Once more, she was the woman Ruth had been scared of, in her early days at MI5. Once more, she was the steely-eyed spy.

"The account our assassin used for payment is Swiss," she told Ruth, listing off a string of numbers, which Tariq scrambled to take down, across the way. "The details of his payment should provide enough proof to link Emily Wood inextricably to both of the attempted murders of her husband." There was a slight pause in conversation, as Juliet appeared to consider telling them something else, then drew back, falling onto dark humour as usual. "I'm afraid I can't account for the money still being in the account," she told them, in her usual drawling tone. "But it will give you the proof you need."

"Where is the money?" Harry asked, shortly – more a ploy to keep her on the line than to actually find out the money's location, Ruth could tell. She also could sense Juliet steeling herself to end the call and run. And they needed more time. The police were still a few minutes out.

"Think of it as my commission, Harry."

"And the assassin himself?" Ruth's boss asked. "Should we expect him floating down the Thames?""

"He had an appointment with a previous employer, this afternoon," Juliet answered, in a voice Ruth was more used to. A clipped, cold voice. "I didn't stay to find out what they discussed but I'm fairly sure he won't be resurfacing around your side of the river any time soon."

Her reference to their 'side' of the river was deliberately tantalising. Harry most likely picked up on it, just as Ruth had.

"Are six involved in this?" he asked, in mild disbelief.

"I think you should probably speak to your counterpart, about them losing their deniable assets to the freelance market," Juliet told him, with a hint of humour in her voice, now, "but I doubt any wrists need to be slapped too hard. They didn't have anything to do with the case. They are just trying to cover their asses, in case someone found out that one of their hit-men had turned to the dark side."

Well, someone knew now, Ruth thought, as she listened in. The Home Secretary was standing right next to Harry as this conversation was taking place. There were going to be some awkward questions posed to Richard Neilson over the next few days.

There was an awkward silence over the phone. Ruth, with her eye on the clock, knew that Juliet had to leave in the next twenty five seconds or risk running into the patrol car which was speeding towards her location. She could feel the expectation rising in the air as everyone held their silence. Quite surprisingly, however, Harry was the first to speak.

"Juliet?" he asked his ex-boss's name.

"I will miss you, Harry," Juliet replied. "I always do."

"We need more information on your deal with Emily Wood," Harry said, in a hollow attempt to keep her on the line.

Juliet, like everyone else, saw straight through it.

Ruth heard her give the softest exhale of a laugh.

"Check locker two-hundred-and-six at Paddington station," she told him, with just a hint of warmth. "That will give you everything you need, in hard-copy form." A few moments passed. Ruth heard her clear her throat. "Take care of yourself."

"Where are you going?" Harry asked. So lost.

A moment's pause, then.

"Somewhere warm, I think."

He breathed out.

She breathed in.

"Goodbye," Juliet sighed.

Then the line crackled and went dead.

In the aftermath, Ruth was left listening to the soft breaths on the other end, to Dimitri asking Erin whether or not she wanted him to go after the locker – then to the sound of Erin declining his offer and telling him that she would send somewhere else. She heard Harry quietly order them both to go and check in with Security and update them on the situation. Then, she heard her boss turn to the Home Secretary and ask if that this justification enough for bringing Emily Wood in. At the former man's muttered response, the phone flickered off speaker and Harry raised it to his ear.

"Harry?" she asked.

"This is a nightmare."

"Do you need me to do anything else."

"Just what you're already doing." He sighed. "Gather everything you have and send it through to Erin's phone. She'll be in contact to sort out some audio. I've got to go talk to the Woods."

"Good luck." She wanted to reach out and comfort him. Suddenly, the few miles that stood between them felt like continents. And there was a sudden and strange feeling of foreboding in her stomach. She wanted completely to say she loved him but they were working and she had been doing so well. "I'll be in touch," she told him, instead, and carefully held her silence.

Harry hesitated for a moment longer, as if he wanted to say something too, then the line beeped and went dead.

Ruth swallowed.

Beside her, Zoe let out a long sniff.

Time to pull her mind off of Harry and onto work.

Giving herself a steadying sigh, Ruth turned in her seat, to face the slightly lost-looking Zoe.

"Zoe?" she asked, gently, trying to prise a reaction from her old friend, knowing that her world was falling around her ears.

"You were all right," the younger woman said, staring at the floor, her expression shell shocked and betrayed. "She was only in this for herself."

Never would she have been more sorry to have her suspicions confirmed, never would she have felt worse to be proven right – but Ruth was not right, not this time. Leaning forwards, she tugged the arm of Zoe's swivel chair, pulling her old colleague towards her. Juliet had done horrible things. She had betrayed people that Ruth loved. She had been a cold-hearted bitch at times and a self-centred ego-maniac at others, but she had loved Zoe, in her own, strange way. And it was not fair for any spy to cast another in a role of absolute. There was no black and white, in their world.

"I never really knew Juliet," Ruth told Zoe, softly, "but I know that she was not just in this for herself."

Zoe sniffed, eyes still on the floor.

"She may have done some things you don't agree with but she risked her freedom coming back and she did that for you."

"It's not fair," Zoe hissed, lifting her eyes to Ruth's, their dark brown shining with tears. "I never asked her to do any of this!"

And Ruth felt familiarity wash over her. The situation. The words. The emotion that was coursing through the woman opposite. She understood. And, though she was perhaps the last person in the world who should really be giving advice, on the subject of love and compromise in relationships, she felt that, in this moment, it was okay.

"Love," she started, slowly, moving a little closer to Zoe as she spoke, "means never having to ask. But, more importantly, it means accepting what you are given – regardless of whether or not you think you deserve it. Juliet did this for you," she took a steadying breath, "and whether or not you understand, or agree, though you might be angry and confused by it, don't put aside the fact that it was done out of love. It does matter."

Zoe held her eye for a long minute before bursting into body-wracking sobs. Ruth pulled her closer and rubbed her back, glad of the contact and of the younger woman's acceptance of her words and they stayed that way until Tariq appeared at Ruth's side, offering her a headset. They had audio on the conversation between the Home Secretary, he told her, and they should probably listen in to Harry and the Woods, to stay ahead of the game.

Sending Zoe to have a cup of tea with one of the junior analysts, then, Ruth pulled on the headset and sat back at her desk. Mind on the task, she told herself, trying to ignore the strange feeling of foreboding in her stomach. Mind on the task, off Zoe, off Juliet and certainly off Harry and the fact that they had never had the chance to say a proper goodbye, at the end of their call. Nothing bad was going to happen. Juliet was running away, their assassin was in the hands of some SIS idiot (no doubt suffering for his having left to the lure of the freelance market), and Emily Wood was surrounded by CO19 personnel in a room without any handy weapons. Everything would be fine. Harry would be fine. Back to work, she told herself, shaking the unease from her chest and a professional look onto her face. Back to work.

.


	30. Chapter 30

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_Chapter 30 – Impact_

.

Harry stood in the hallway, the metal casing of his phone warm against his palm. Just seconds ago, it had been a connection to Ruth and now it was just an empty piece of metal, filled with electronics. Still, he clung to it, as if it might bring her voice back to him.

He did not want to be here. This was the end of a very long day, of a very long week and he was dog tired. The threat was averted, for now. Juliet was running and Emily Wood was as good as in custody. From the cowed look on the Home Secretary's face, the phone call with his office and Juliet Shaw was as solid proof as he needed. The politician would let him take her in for questioning, Harry told himself. And, while she was being interrogated by Erin, Tariq would run down the information Juliet had brought him. The rest of the team would put it all together and Harry would bring it back to Towers later that night – complete with smug smile – and then the politicians could take care of the rest. Harry could find Ruth, take her home, curl up against her and sleep.

He wished that he could just skip his other responsibilities and go straight to that bit, now. He didn't want to be here, to deal with politicians or politician's wives, or his own tortured, betrayed thoughts of Juliet, or the weariness in his bones. He just wanted his bed and sleep, and Ruth. But duty held him in place. He had things to finish. He had responsibilities.

Turning to Towers, he sighed and began to set events in motion.

"I suppose this adds a little weight to our claims?" he asked, with only a hint of the antagonism that burned inside of him. If only this was a police state, he mused, and the Security Services had the right to arrest anyone they saw fit. (He knew why it wouldn't work, of course – and knew why he wouldn't want it to work – but that did not stop him from wishing, sometimes. Some days, it would just make things that little bit easier).

Towers shuffled his feet.

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"We will be having words about Shaw later," the politician eventually grumbled, "but for now I think you're right. We should go and talk to the Consul. Whatever Emily has become involved in..." he rubbed his hand across his face and shifted again, awkwardly. "I suppose we need to get to the bottom of it."

"Agreed," Harry nodded, curtly, never one to rub anyone's nose in being wrong, unless it was strictly necessary. "I'll lead, shall I?"

"Could you try and cushion it with diplomacy?" Towers asked, tentatively.

If he had been any less tired and his brain any less full, Harry would have been offended. As it was, he just gave a little shrug.

"Well, I suppose I could try."

.

The conversation with the Consul and his wife went every bit as well as Harry had expected it to go. At first, there was disbelief, then rage and shouting, then they turned on the Home Secretary, then on Harry and then, finally, on each other. Emily Wood snapped at her husband, telling him that it was all his fault that they were in this situation. He threw back that she was being unreasonable, as she always was. They bitterly exchanged the usual words, the usual angers – words Harry had heard often, during his time with Jane; denial, deflection, putting the party line above their own family.

While they argued, Harry spent his time observing the minute changes in their facial expressions, trying to track guilt across the wife's face in particular. It was a strange picture he found there. Rage he could see, terror was there in spades, but there was no guilt, not yet. She was still nervous. She was still fearful. If this was truly an unveiling of her actions then she would be trying to explain herself but, while she was acting like a woman cornered, she still seemed to be holding back. Protectively. She had something more to lose.

Eventually, sensing the time for observation had passed, he stepped in and addressed the wife, causing both Torrance and Emily Wood to turn and look at him, startled from their tirade.

"Your son was arrested on the morning of November the tenth, last year." he stated, causing Torrance Wood's eyebrows to raise in surprise. "When you went in to collect him, Emily, you met a man called Zhang Yi, known to his Western customers as 'Ray'."

The mixture of terror and surprise on her face was enough to destroy any lingering doubt Harry had, about her guilt.

"I have no idea who you are talking about!" the Consul's wife spat.

"The young man who was arrested, alongside your son." Harry clarified. "They were brought in together after being, rather unluckily, overseen conducting a small-scale cannabis deal by two policemen."

"We disclosed Todd's drugs cautions when we talked with you at the beginning of the investigation," Torrance Wood said, stepping forwards. "I don't understand why this is coming up now?"

Harry shook his head.

"This was not one of the times your son was formally cautioned," he told the Consul. "This was one of the times your wife collected him and all charges were mysteriously dropped, later."

Wood frowned at his wife.

"Emily?"

"I asked the police officers in charge to go easy on him," the taut-faced woman tried to explain, waving one hand dismissively. "I told them that he was just acting out."

"Just told them?" Harry asked, innocently.

"I gave them a small amount of extra cash, on top of the bail, for the trouble of removing the details of Todd's arrest from the file. I was trying to limit the damage," she explained, in mild exasperation, as her husband looked at her in horror. "You know what Todd was like, at that stage, he would have thrown his entirely life away, if he had the chance. He had already had two cautions and the next conviction would have landed him with a huge black mark on his permanent record. No respectable company or University would consider him, after that. I needed to protect him." She turned, from her husband, back to Harry. "I brought my son straight home, from the police station. I have no idea who this 'Ray' was or if he was released-,"

"You paid for his release, alongside your son's," Harry stated again. "You fortunately forgot to pay for them extra, to change _his_ file, so the records are fairly clear."

Emily looked caught completely off guard, for a moment.

Harry felt a tiny flicker of something like triumph in his belly. Their theory and their proof were beginning to gel together. They were on the right track.

"Did you truly do it to hide your son's drug habit?" he pressed, while the Consul's wife was still off balance. "Or was there some other involvement you were covering up?"

Emily Wood scanned the room, looking first to her husband, then to William Towers. Then, perhaps realising where this line of questioning was heading, her body language changed, entirely. Her aggressive posturing slipped back into something submissive, something a little hurt. She turned, plaintively, to the Home Secretary.

"William, why are they doing this?" she asked, her voice almost a whine. "They cannot possibly believe I had anything to do with this man, whoever he is."

But, if she truly didn't know, Harry thought, then she would not be reacting so nervously. From her actions, now, he was almost sure that Emily Wood knew who Zhang 'Ray' Yi was, just like she knew who he was connected to and what they had tried to do to her husband. She knew where this was going and Harry could almost smell the rising desperation. Trap yourself, he willed her, silently. Do something stupid. Say something silly and incriminating and make this easier for me, please.

"You know him," Harry stated, out loud.

"William?" Emily Wood implored again, eyes wide at the Home Secretary.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to answer Sir Harry's questions, Emily," Towers spoke, softly. Even his eyes were starting to look doubtful of her innocence.

"Emily," Torrance Wood turned his wife towards himself, one hand on each forearm. Harry noticed she winced, slightly, at the contact. And the guilt, that guilt he had been searching for but was absent in her face, finally making an appearance. "You couldn't possibly have anything to do with this," the Consul assured his wife. "I know that. William knows that. This is probably all a big misunderstanding," he turned to Harry with what Harry could only interpret as an optimistic smile. "Isn't that right?"

"We need to question you about the circumstances of the payments leaving your son's savings account, on the sixteenth of November and the twenty seventh of December, last year," Harry stated, bluntly. He knew that the Home Secretary would jump down his throat at his lack of diplomacy, later, but it was not his bloody job to hold their hands. Emily Wood was implicated in a homicide – in action against a minister of the Government of the Great Britain. If she was anyone less influential, she would have been out the door half an hour ago and in the back of a CO19 van. "No conclusions will be drawn on your actions until we have examined all the evidence available."

"But she can't possibly be involved," Wood said, as if he was gently reminding Harry that accusing politician's wives was just not cricket. "She's my wife. She's been put at risk by these people just as much as I was. The bomb in the embassy-,"

"Happened while you were both out."

"But my son was there!"

"On the other side of the building, out of harm's way," Harry pointed out, with purposeful lightness to his tone.

Just as he had predicted, his mention of her son sparked a reaction in Emily Wood. As her husband angrily dismissed Todd Wood being in the building as mere coincidence – growled that his wife could not possibly be willing to hurt their son, or even take the risk that he be hurt, and why would she want him dead anyway? – her eyes became somewhat distant. They slid off to one side and Harry could suddenly see the conflict there. Because the time was coming, he told himself, when she had to either paint herself into a corner, or reveal the truth. (And Harry was fairly sure it was the truth, if his suspicions were correct. Several things had suddenly slipped into place, over the last hour or so. A comment by Calum, something in Ruth's note, a hesitation in Juliet's telling of the story, the strange dynamic in the family before him. The mother was involved in this, just not _exactly_ as Ruth had expected).

"My wife would not hire men to kill me!" Torrance Wood insisted, gesturing to the woman beside him without looking at her – because, if he had, the slowly shifting expression on her face would have given him pause to reconsider his question. "This is absurd!"

Ignoring him, Harry turned to the wife again.

"You paid the policemen to hide Todd's connection to the drug dealer?" he asked, to confirm and to provide interlude to his next question.

She nodded, very slightly. She had no choice. The evidence pointed against her.

Torrance Wood looked mildly distressed by this, but overrode it, to rise to her defence again.

"That does not mean she was involved with this man – whoever he is."

"That man," Harry told him, slowly, "Zhang Yi, or 'Ray', has connections with both the three men who attempted to kill you at the Shanghai consulate and the man who tried to shoot you through the neck, once you had returned to London."

Wood's eyes narrowed, slightly, the beginnings of suspicion forming around the corners of his forehead.

Harry changed his tone, gaze sliding back over to Emily Wood.

"Todd has had drugs arrests before and you didn't try to cover them up, then," he told her. "Why did you do so this time? Was it because he told you who Zhang Yi was and what sort of people he had contact with?"

Emily Wood's jaw tightened, her heartbeat pulsing faster in the vein at her neck.

"I was trying to cover his involvement with low people, such as drug dealers," she retorted, quickly.

"I don't think you were covering up your son's drug habit," said Harry, softly, watching her eyes confirm what he had expected, "or his association with drugs dealers. I think you were covering up his association with one drug dealer in particular – one who put him in contact with three young would-be assassins."

There was complete silence for all of five seconds. Then, the room exploded with noise.

Torrance Wood stepped hurriedly forwards, reacting physically to this sleight against his wife and son by moving to punch Harry across the face. Dimitri called out for him to stand down, stepping in between them and wrestling the Consul back from his boss. Harry stepped away, holding his silence for his part, while two guards stepped in between and William Towers rounded angrily on him, asking him why the hell this was the first he had heard about this – something which Harry hardly thought was possible to have averted, seeing as he had only known for sure, himself, as he surveyed the people involved and their reactions.

The door the living room burst open, as Emily Wood began sobbing, and two of the CO19 men, who had been interviewing Todd, in the kitchen, burst in, looking panicked. After a tense moment, where Harry had to convince them that there was no immediate danger to the Consul and that this was rather a private business, they were finally persuaded to lower their weapons – though they remained resolutely in the room, to witness the rest of the conversation.

By the time Torrance Wood had been talked down from jumping Harry – and had resorted to simply slinging insults his way – Emily Wood had stopped sobbing uncontrollably. A strange look of calm had come over her face, a look which appeared to be resignation. Sensing the change in her stance and what it could imply, Harry turned to her, to listen.

"Emily?" he asked her given name, gently. "What is it?"

"It was me," she muttered, stepping forwards and away from her husband – who was being patted on the shoulder by a very nervous William Towers. "I swear, Todd had nothing to do with any of this. It was all me," she insisted, eyes hard with desperation. "I just wanted to go home. I wanted to take him home."

"What are you talking about?" her husband rounded on her. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Shut up and let your wife speak," Harry snapped, never taking his eyes off the shaky woman on front of him. "Emily, please continue."

"I did it," she said, quite plainly, finally lifting her eyes off the floor.

They were sad. And resigned. And full of love.

Harry frowned.

"You did what?"

"Hired the assassins," she told him, softly, then listed their names.

Everyone stood in startled silence, for a moment, then Torrance Wood burst forth again, his face now a picture of confusion.

"Emily, why are you saying this? I love you. You love me. I know you were not happy out there, but this is preposterous!"

Harry watched them both carefully. The woman was now defending her son. He had to find some way to push past her maternal instincts and get to the truth but, the problem was, the urge for a mother to protect her child was probably the strongest of human instincts. He would need far longer and far more delicate a hand than he could practise here. And Torrance Wood was not making it any easier.

"Emily," the Consul continued to plead. "You have got to tell us what's going on. I know you wouldn't do this. I know you love me-"

"-I do love you," she whispered, almost to herself, her eyes slipping closed then open as she spoke. "But I love him more..."

"Emily?"

Her eyes snapped open and she pulled her hands free of her husband's grasp, rounding on Towers; man she read was the most high-ranking in the room. For a moment, everyone else quietened again, perhaps sensing the weight of the words she was carrying. Then she said it.

"I did it. I hired them to kill my husband," she held out her hands. "You should arrest me."

And everything devolved chaos again.

Emily Wood began to cry. The Home Secretary having to step in to try and soothe the situation, taking the her by the arm as the security guards dragged the Consul aside and away from his wife. Torrance Wood was almost crying, too, most likely in frustration. His desperate pleas, for his wife to listen, to explain, were falling on deaf ears, however, as Emily leant despondently against the Home Secretary's arm. Dimitri was stood in the middle of it all, trying to get Security to separate the pair, while they sorted this. Erin had moved over to the Home Secretary and was trying to get Emily to speak, shaking her gently by the shoulder, trying to catch her eye. Standing off to one side, Harry watched all of it like a slightly numb spectator.

His lack of involvement was, perhaps, why he was the first to spot the son enter the room.

Todd Wood was a slight boy, for his age – the spitting image of his father with floppy brown hair and grey-blue eyes. He was everything Harry had expected from the background files. And, Harry thought – for a boy who had just watched his mother admit to hiring assassins to kill his father, he looked absurdly calm. Then again, if Harry was right, Todd knew more about the matter than any of Harry's team. He knew that his mother had, in truth, only ordered the second assassination – and only then to cover for the perpetrator of the first. To throw any investigators off the scent of her son, she had found a man who was the exact opposite of the men who had tried and failed to bomb the Consul in the embassy and she had hired him to finish the job.

A murder investigation would be carried out by the police, instead of Security services and, quite ironically in Harry's opinion, they were generally shorter-term investigations. After all, there was no continued risk once the victim was dead. There was no continued threat. It was a good plan, thought Harry, looking at the boy who Emily Wood had just implicated herself to protect. But, it was inherently flawed. It involved a teenager. And teenagers were impulsive and notoriously bad at keeping secrets. This, he thought, could work to his advantage.

"Todd?" Harry asked the boy, as he stood, shell-shocked and blank-eyed, in the doorway. "How long have you been listening?"

Everyone turned, the ruckus in the room falling silent as they all took in this new participant to the scene, and calculated what it meant for each of them, individually.

The boy gave a little shift.

"Long enough."

Beside Harry, Torrance Wood cried out not to dare say a word to his son – that he'd done enough damage. (Such strange reactions people had, Harry mused, when confronted with betrayal from the inside of their family unit. Even when the proof was good, even when the betrayer had admitted their betrayal, the victim still externalised their blame. It was the way people worked. People had to trust. Had to bond. Had to belong to one another. Harry supposed it was their greatest weakness, as well as their greatest strength).

"Did you hear what your mother said?" he asked the boy again, ignoring the father.

Todd nodded, slightly.

"Is this really the time, Harry?" Towers asked, reproachfully, from where he held the dazed-looking Emily Wood upright. "Can't it wait?"

"Do you have anything to tell us, Todd?" Harry continued, ignoring his superior's questions, keeping his attention focussed on the boy... the boy who, Harry suddenly realised, had his hands in his pockets.

The Section Head stiffened, instinctively. Panic ran through him. He had thought, initially, that Todd walking into the room had been a boon, for him. He had thought it would make the mother easier to control. He had thought he could play them off against each other but suddenly all of that paled into insignificance because he suddenly remembered the facts of the situation quite plainly. Todd had hired assassins – presumably because he wanted to kill his father and return to England. This meant that Todd was a rather disturbed fifteen year old. Todd had also been in the kitchen, for the last few minutes, and kitchens contained all sorts of implements that could be used as weapons. This was not good. This was bad. This was dangerous.

"Who was watching him?" Harry asked the guards who were standing nearby, next to the Consul. "Who was in the kitchen, with the kid?"

One shrugged.

"Me and my partner were. We were asking him some questions about the house and his family. We both came through when I heard the shouting. I thought there was a problem."

Harry swallowed.

Alone in the kitchen, with access to untold amounts of weaponry and anger in his heart.

He looked back over at the boy.

"Todd, we need to see your hands," he asked him, calmly. "Can you lift your hands out of your pockets, please?"

The two CO19 men, standing near the doorway through into the dining room, must have realised what he was thinking at exactly the same time that Harry had, because their body language began to shift into something infinitely more threatening. Their stance became more upright, one called into the radio for backup. Both raised their gun muzzles in response.

"Steady," Harry hissed at them, not taking his eyes off the boy, who had stepped a little further into the room – towards the collection of his parents and assorted spooks, at the centre of it.

"For God's sake!" the Home Secretary growled, turning first to Harry then the armed guards. "Lower your weapons. He's a child!"

But, child or not, Todd had a five inch kitchen knife clenched in his hand, when he raised it from his pockets.

Harry swallowed.

The father took a sharp intake of breath.

The mother gave a strange strangled sob and murmured the boy's name.

The Home Secretary fell strangely silent as Erin and Dimitri drew their handguns and CO19 began to shout to drop the weapon, muzzles pointed fixedly at the boy on front of them.

Stepping forwards, Harry positioned himself directly in Todd Wood's line of sight, trying to engage him in a dialogue. It had been years since he had done any sort of negotiation, but needs must when the devil drove – and he was saddled up tonight.

"Drop the knife, Todd," Harry advised, in a gentler tone than his armed companions. "They have orders, from the Prime Minister himself, to protect your father at all costs."

The boy got a strange little smile.

"You know, I think this what's called ironic," he said, dazedly. "Nobody would have been hurt if we'd done it my way,"

"Your way?" Harry asked, as calmly as he was able.

"Yes. The bomb was never supposed to go off. It was just meant to scare him. Those idiots did something wrong and ended up killing themselves."

Harry nodded, the knowledge that he had been right oddly tasteless, given the situation.

"And the second attempt on your father's life?" he asked, trying to buy time.

The boy tried not to react, but his eyes flickered, ever so slightly, in the direction of his mother.

"I did it, Todd. I said I did it. Put the knife away," she was murmuring, in a half-voice. "Just put the knife away or they'll hurt you."

"Nobody was meant to get hurt," Todd repeated, turning to Harry.

"Todd, why don't you put the knife down and tell us what happened?" Harry asked. "You hired the first men, didn't you? Your mother was trying to cover it up, wasn't she?"

Todd stared.

Harry decided to try another angle.

"Did she give them the security layout, to the embassy, or did you?" he asked.

Todd shifted, eyes flickering again over to his mother, who let out a shaky sob and repeated her guilt.

"It doesn't matter now," he eventually mumbled, "does it?"

"It always matters, Todd," Harry took a step forwards, inciting the boy to raise his knife again, slightly. Holding both hands up, Harry tried to soothe the situation. "We need to know what happened, Todd. None of us can leave this room until we do. If you want to move on, you have to tell us the truth."

Todd swallowed, looking like he might be about to cry.

"Did your mother offer to cover up your hiring these men?" Harry asked.

Todd gave a little shrug.

"Nobody was supposed to get hurt," he repeated. "I don't know why those bombs went off."

"You hired them to leave the bombs and a threat, didn't you?"

"Yes," Todd finally admitted.

There was a collective exhale that swept through the room. From Emily Wood, it was more like a wail.

"It was never meant to go this far," Todd told him, his expression dangling somewhere between devastated and manic. "The bomb was never supposed to go off. It was just supposed to scare them, but mum said that scaring wasn't enough, that the building had to be destroyed..." he gave a shaky little breath, "...I just wanted to go home."

As he spoke, he waved the knife around and – though he was not coming any nearer – Harry felt the CO19 men shift closer, taking up a protective triangle around the Consul.

"Todd, put down the blasted knife," Torrance Wood was hissing. "Whatever you've done, we can talk about it later. These men don't have time for your games."

Harry wondered how little time the man spent with his son, to be immune to the pain in his eyes. Whatever this was to Todd – whatever confusion had led him to believe this was the only path left open to him – this was not a game.

"Lower the knife," Harry asked, more softly. "We can figure this out without it."

"Drop the knife, Todd!" The boy's father tried, in a tone of command. "I don't believe any of this nonsense, but they will shoot you if you don't put the knife down!"

"Do what your father says, Todd," Harry urged.

"Why?" the boy looked up, eyes angry and suddenly swimming with tears. "She's going to prison and he'll just take me back there. What's the point?"

And what to say to that, wondered Harry, staring at the distraught young man on front of him. This child, this young adult, this kid caught halfway to maturity when the world was so small and everything in it felt so big. What were you supposed to say to make him see the point? The truth? Harry knew better than the truth. The truth was harsh and hard and cruel. The truth was that his mother would go to prison, for what he had done, that he would probably be questioned and – if he did not admit to his part in all of this – then he would go back to his father and his father would go back to Shanghai. Whatever else Torrance Wood was, he was a politician first and he had made a commitment to his duty there. He would go back. He would take Todd and Todd would go on being quiet and lonely and miserable, as Ruth and described him to Harry, just that morning.

The world was not set to improve, for Todd, at least not for the next few years. So how was Harry to say he should just suck it up for the time being? How was he supposed to explain that, if he put down the knife and told the truth, did the year or so he would get in juvenile detention then came out clean, that he could make something of his life – that there was so much still out there, waiting for him? How was Harry supposed to make this child see that there was hope in a world which, for the most part, seemed bent on sadness and ruin? Harry had not even managed to explain that to his own son.

"Just put down the knife, Todd..." he asked, gently, nodding to the ground. "Just let it go."

The boy watched him and, for just the briefest of moments, Harry thought he was going to. Then he shook his head.

"I don't want to be here anymore."

And the complete abandon in his eyes told Harry exactly what he was going to do.

Todd strode forwards, lifting the knife – eyes not angry, not resentful, just full of terrible, terrible fear – staring straight into Harry and, as if purely by instinct, Harry's feet carried him two steps sideways, to stand on front of Torrance Wood. It did not matter who stood in his way, the Section Head thought – as split seconds passed like minutes and time seemed to stretch on into eternity – it did not matter who stood at the end of his knife, as long as CO19 would shoot to protect them. Better him than Wood, then, Harry could remember thinking, dimly. Wood was important. He was needed as a cosignatory on countless deals. His death would be front page news while Harry's... well, this was his duty. This place, Harry thought, standing between Torrance Wood and this scared child with a knife. This was where he belonged.

It must have taken three or five seconds, for Todd to cross the room. Those two seconds must have been full of shouting and screaming, people jumping forwards and back and grasping hold of each other in surprise, but Harry did not notice. Everything felt as if it had frozen in place. All he could hear was his own heartbeat, very loud in his ears, and his own breath. One in, one out, a strange half-catch in the back of his throat. They were so close. The boy was just inches away. The thought that he could still drop the knife, that everything could still be averted, dribbled away with every microsecond. And as his hand lifted, Harry felt the first flush of fear, through the surprise and numb duty that had washed over him.

Knife into flesh. He knew what that felt like. So much blood. Warm blood, sharp intrusion, then a moment, then pain. And so much more blood. So much blood...

In the last second did the sound come rushing back in. CO19 were yelling to drop the weapon. Wood was shouting, the mother was screaming, the Home Secretary was calling on Harry to stand down. Dimitri and Erin, handguns raised, were deadly silent, their eyes focussed on Harry, waiting, asking him to tell them to fire. Harry could not tell them. The boy was fifteen. Only fifteen.

Todd took a step closer. Harry's mind filled with the thought of what Ruth, wondering where she was, hoping she could not hear this happening, losing himself momentarily in the memory of her skin against his. For so long, he had dreaded her being taken from him. He had never thought about what it would be like to be taken from her. He had always assumed that, when and if the moment came, that he would deal with it, that his death would mean something and therefore be worthwhile. But this was not worthwhile. This was just death, staring him in the face. And he didn't want to leave her. He did not want to leave her. This was all too sudden. All too final. He needed more time.

But there was no more time. This was it, he thought, time beginning to move forwards again, from where it had almost frozen. This was the moment he had been so afraid of and now that he was here the adrenaline was not carrying him through as he had always thought it would. He was scared. This was it. This was impact. All he could see was the boy's eyes, wide and scared on front of him. All he could feel was his own heartbeat, fast and scared inside of him.

This was it.

A gunshot rang out.

Then sharp pain.

And hot blood.

And the boy's body against his as they collided. And fell to the ground. Together.

Impact.

.


	31. Chapter 31

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_Chapter 31 – Moving On_

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For three or so hours, Ruth muddled through, doing her job as best as she was able, through the mind-numbing shock. She shifted reports around, calling the right people, making sure all the teams had what they needed and knew where they were going – keeping the Grid moving, like Harry would have wanted her to. Seconds after Erin had called, to tell them that they were heading back from the hospital, however, she had turned and fled for the open air. With Erin on the Grid, she wouldn't be needed to assign analysts and junior officers, anymore. She could finally go and do what she had been wanting to do since that gunshot rang out in the Consul's Mayfair house – break down and cry, quietly, in a corner somewhere.

If Calum had been there, she supposed, or any other member of the team, they would have stopped her but Tariq was too busy – up to his neck in manning the comms and compiling the evidence against Emily Wood – and Zoe was locked in an interrogation room. With nobody to prevent her, then, Ruth turned from her station and staggered off the Grid. Climbing the stairs, she headed out onto the roof, letting the strong January wind slam the door back into place behind her. It was freezing up here. The grey of the early morning had returned and, with it, the snow clouds which had lightened their streets. In the dark, their bellies hung low over the city, purple and threatening. The wind wrapped around her, hard, battering at her skin, threatening to tear her cardigan off her body. It was a mark of her state of mind that she did not feel her lack of warm coat.

She stood for five or ten minutes, just staring out into the black of the Thames, down into the roads below and the headlights of the cars winding along them. London was never really dark. The billboards lit some places, the street lamps and offices others. Out in the residential districts, the lights of homes bathed the sky with its orange tinge. The overhead clouds made it darker, tonight, but the life of the city was irrefutable. Life went on, around them, no matter how many people died in this place. It was something of a blessing, really, thought Ruth just a little numbly. There were plenty times that, if they had not been surrounded by life, a spook might feel like the last person alive in this world.

Her shivering stopped after the first five minutes, the response drowned by her body's sheer exhaustion. By the time she saw the cars appear, down on the street, she was almost completely numb. As she leant over the railing and counted the people stepping out from the vehicles, however, Ruth felt the cold returned in a rush.

Relief flooded through her as her fingers suddenly stung with the wind. Wrapping her arms around her body, she turned to look at the door, anticipation rising through her. The idea of reuniting was almost overpowering but she didn't want the others to see this. Not yet. She wasn't ready. So, she stayed still, standing in the cold, for another five minutes. She knew he would come.

Sure enough, only five minutes passed before she heard footsteps on the stairwell.

Familiar footsteps.

Harry's footsteps.

As he stepped out into the wind, corporeal and unharmed, Ruth almost cried out his name in delight. She only just managed to restrain herself from running towards him, holding herself tight to her spot until he spotted her and turned to face her, across the windy roof.

"What on earth are you doing up here?" he asked, voice loud to sound over the howling wind.

"I needed some fresh air," she said, her voice cracking twice over the words. Everything was okay. Harry was here. Harry was safe. It felt so strange, having a normal conversation after all that had happened – after the gunshot, after the knife – after almost losing him. "Everything was under control downstairs," she told him, pushing on through the shaking, overwhelming relief. "I figured I could take five minutes."

"Ruth, it's freezing."

"I know. I just needed to get away from it all."

He stood there, about ten feet away, just watching, hands by his sides. Underneath his coat, Ruth could see that he was not wearing his normal suit jacket and shirt but what looked like hospital scrubs. Though his trousers had survived the events of the Wood confrontation, his upper half had not. Erin said that he held the boy as he fell, that he kept pressure on the gunshot wound until the paramedics got there, helped Dimitri give the boy CPR when his heart stopped, despite being badly injured himself. He would have been covered in blood, she thought, looking to his hands then back up to his face. He had washed most of it clean but there was still a smear or two, about his neck. Pink on skin.

Fifteen stitches, her mind recounted, from the report Erin had sent them from hospital. He had been given fifteen stitches, IV fluids and pain medication strong enough to sink a horse, (Erin's actual words). When Todd Wood had fallen forwards, body paralysed by the shock of the bullet to his chest, the knife grasped in his hand had slipped downwards, cutting into Harry's side, just above his hip. The Doctors had deemed it a superficial wound but fifteen stitches did not sound like something to walk off, to Ruth.

"You shouldn't have discharged yourself from the hospital..." she admonished, quietly, stepping a little closer. "They wanted to keep you in for another hour of observation."

Harry gave her a crooked smile, eyes full of warm affection.

"Honestly, of all the wounds I've suffered, in the line of service, this is no great pain."

That was it. The thought of all of his years of pain was enough to drive her to the edge of control. Tears which had been threatening to fall all evening began to slide down Ruth's cheeks. Their touch was fire hot against the cool of her skin.

Harry startled and made towards her, looking exceedingly apologetic.

"Ruth, I'm okay, I really am," he strode quickly to her side and gathered her towards him, sliding his hands around her neck and cradling her face up to his. "Darling, I feel so much better, just seeing you."

The touch of his hand was incredibly welcome but Ruth startled slightly, at the endearment. They had never used such words with each other before and, though she did not dislike it, it had surprised her. At her reaction, Harry's lips parted, as if he were going to try and explain. After a moment, however, he seemed to reign the urge back in again. Instead, he just cleared his throat and gave a little shake of the head, trying to pull her closer.

"You're injured," Ruth reminded him, resisting. "I could hurt you."

"They stitched me back together and the painkillers I'm on are fantastic," he assured her. "I actually feel better than I did this morning. Back aches, joint aches, headaches; all gone." He smiled. "I feel almost as if I'm twenty again. Well, perhaps thirty, to be more realistic, but much better anyway."

Ruth blinked, feeling another tear slip down the crease between her nose and her mouth.

"Here, look," Harry pulled back from her, unbuttoning his coat and inching the hospital scrub top up over a bandage on his right hand side. "It was the luckiest place I could have been hit. The blade went straight through, without touching anything more than skin and fat." He shot her a smile as she looked, worriedly, at the pink-stained bandage. "It seems that all those years of avoiding gyms and exercise have finally paid off."

Her lips tugged into a little smile at that, despite the pressure of the moment.

Harry dropped the shirt and made to pull her into an embrace again, but she shifted away.

"I don't want to hurt you," she excused, wiping away the remnants of previous tears from her lashes, where they were starting to freeze.

"Ruth, you could smack me round the face with a cricket bat right now and I would barely feel it," he insisted.

Ruth exhaled a soft laugh.

"Harry..."

"I'm honestly feeling very chipper."

"Har-,"

"-just come here... please..."

Heaving a sigh, she relented and leant in, careful not to touch the tender side he had shown her.

"Okay. But tell me if you're at all sore," she warned.

"I will," Harry told her, wrapping his arms back around her and cocooning her against his chest. "Promise."

Ruth breathed out, feeling the distress of the last couple of hours just floating away. This felt wonderful. He felt wonderful; solid and unharmed and smelling, underneath the hospital and blood and disinfectant, so very comfortingly of Harry. They stood there for a long time, just breathing each other in. Harry buried his face in her hair. Ruth rested her cheek against his chest and stared off into the distance. Below them, the Thames curled blackly past. The clouds shifted and rolled above. The first dots of what looked like snow swirled in the air a few metres away. Ruth wondered if they would wake tomorrow to another white-out London. Maybe they would be snowed in, she thought, hopefully. There was nothing she would like better than spending an entire day wrapped up in bed with Harry. She could stick some wood on the fireplace in his living room, grab a book or two, be perilously indulgent and drag the duvet down from upstairs, wrap themselves in it on the couch and wile away the day. They deserved a day off after today.

One of Harry's warm hands stroked the back of her head.

"I'm glad you're okay," she whispered, gripping him as tightly as she dared.

"So am I."

His voice betrayed his honest surprise that he had made it and Ruth felt a wash of gratitude towards the world, or whatever fate it was, that decided spooks' lives.

"It sounded pretty bad in there, for a while," she admitted.

"I know," he mumbled, against her. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." She didn't want him to be sorry. She just wanted him here. "It's what we do," she tried to explain, with as few words as possible. "You're here now."

He breathed out, the tension sliding away from his body. Relief.

After half a minute or so, Harry's heat began to seep into her and the shivering returned to her body, causing her to tremble. Harry made to pull off his jacket, in response, to hand it to her, but Ruth promptly refused the offer. Parting the open front of it, she pushed herself against him, instead. Slipping her arms around his middle, she stepped closer and – ignoring her natural need to draw back from such an overt display of need – waited for him to encircle her with his arms again. It was not a long wait. Pulling the sides of his coat around her, Harry folded her snugly against his chest, ignoring her complaints that she was going to tear his stitches. It felt so good that Ruth lost confidence in her complaints. The wind was cold. She had been out in it for too long and Harry's body was soft and warm against her. She did not want to pull away. She wanted to stay. He felt wonderful. And wonderfully alive.

They stood for another couple of minutes, readjusting to the feel of each other, before Ruth finally felt ready to address the reality of their situation.

"Did you speak to the Home Secretary?" she asked, drawing her face back from Harry's chest and tilting her face back to meet his eyes.

Harry nodded. "Reports are all handed over to Special Branch, who will liaise with the relevant authorities. All of our intel has checked out. You and Tariq did a good job."

"I think I wrote most of it in autopilot. My brain seems to have taken a disconnect from my body."

"Exhaustion," Harry explained, his mouth forming a yawn as if to elaborate his point.

Ruth nodded and smiled, feeling a rush of need and warmth towards the man standing opposite her – accompanied by the briefest feeling of guilt before she remembered that she was allowed to feel those things, now – that they were allowed this. They were a 'they'.

"How are things elsewhere?" she asked, to distract herself from the growing need to ask him to take her home and curl up with her, in bed.

Harry shifted and sighed, fingers rubbing down her spine, through the thin fabric of her cardigan.

"Not good. Emily Wood nearly managed to kill herself on the ambulance ride over to the hospital but Erin managed to stop her. She and Dimitri are going to have a crack at her tomorrow afternoon, see if they can find anything more out. I doubt they'll get anything. She's not spoken since her son..." he trailed off, then cleared his throat and continued. "There's a lot still to do. A lot of damage limitation, liaising with all the services involved in the investigation, etcetera. Finding out who Juliet's assassin used to work as a deniable asset for. I think we should start by looking into the man who wanted to buy the assassin off Juliet."

Ruth frowned. "I thought the TerraPharm link was dead in the water?"

"I got a call back from Jim Coaver a couple of hours ago. Apparently the man who met with Juliet was a fixer for the company. He was sent here to get our man and find out why he had killed one of their top executives last year."

"So TerraPharm weren't covering their ass," Ruth stated, in mild surprise. "They didn't hire him?"

"No. It seems they just wanted to know who did."

Ruth stood and thought about that for a minute. If the biotech company hadn't hired the assassin then he could, very likely, have still been working for his previous employer. Why Six would want a foreign biotech executive dead was a bit beyond her, but she supposed it was one of those dark truths that would be revealed over the course of the investigation.

As Harry gave another little sigh, she pressed her cheek against his chest and wondered if it was time to pull back and act professional. They had greeted each other, after all, and there was a lot left to do, downstairs in the office. Ruth knew she should probably gather herself and act like an adult, but earlier tonight she had thought Harry dead. While her logical mind said she should pull back and push on, the emotional part of her knew she needed the heat and the sustained contact. Besides, her boss didn't seem to mind.

"What does Towers have to say, about all of this?" she asked, giving a little shiver as a particularly strong gust of wind rushed around them.

"I asked him to leave the SIS link for me to look at for a while, before he goes to Neilson. On the rest, he says there will be a lot of slapped wrists for the outcome but that nobody's going to be officially reprimanded. However angry or influential Torrance Wood might be, what happened was un-preventable with the intelligence we had, at the time. We did as well as we could. MI5 had to bring Emily Wood in. CO19 had no choice but to do their job and protect a government official, when Todd reacted to that. Apparently, our necks are in the clear."

A few seconds passed.

Ruth felt Harry clutch her a little tighter.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, softly.

"That, whatever the rationalisation we use, a fifteen year old boy is still dead."

"You were doing your job," Ruth reminded him, "just like CO19. You had to save the Consul. The deals he was cosignatory on were too important to risk." The words felt cheap and nasty even as they left her mouth. She looked up at Harry afterwards, but he did not look disapproving. He knew the harsh reality of the situation, she reminded herself. Better than most. "You were exactly where you had to be," she told him, solidly.

"I know," he sighed, "but if Todd was my son,_ I_ would have wanted to be the one he was facing. I would have wanted try to talk him down, no matter the risk. If there was a chance it could save his life, I would have killed anyone who stood between us."

Ruth straightened up a little, sliding a hand between them so that they were able to meet each other's gaze.

"You did the right thing and _your_ son is alive, Harry. There is no one standing between you. Don't draw yourself into a dark parallel, on this one. Self pity won't help either of you."

He nodded, just a little.

"I know, I'm lucky."

"We're _both_ lucky," she insisted, faltering for a second over whether or not to share then deciding they were close enough, now, for him to hear this without feeling guilty. "Harry, back there," she started, a little shakily, "listening in to the operation from the Grid, there was a minute – just a few seconds, really, but long enough – where I thought... where I thought that you were..."

Harry winced.

"I know. I realise what it must have all sounded like, over comms."

Awful was the only word Ruth could think of, to describe it. Standing there, listening to that gunshot had felt like having her heart shredded into tiny pieces.

"I was terrified," she admitted, digging her fingers into his sides, feeling him against her; solid and real and unharmed. "It was only for a few seconds but I thought I'd lost you."

"I'm sorry."

Ruth shook her head. "It wasn't your fault, Harry, and I understand that you had to be there. That's not my point. I just..." her voice faltered. She cleared her throat. "I just thought you were dead and..."

And... what? How did she possibly explain what had rushed through her mind, in that moment?

The gunshot had sounded. Erin had cried Harry's name and there had been scuffling and people shouting erratically. For a good half a minute, nobody on the Grid had known what was going on. Ruth had sat, frozen, at her station, staring at the screen. Tariq had sat next to her, headphones on, hand holding them to his head, watching her watch. Neither of them had spoken, both anticipating the next words that would come from Erin's line as 'officer down'. Ruth's entire body had felt like jelly.

It was almost exactly the same feeling as that afternoon that Harry had driven to meet Lucas North, on a east London rooftop. In that split second, where she thought he was dead and everything else stilled into insignificance, it had felt exactly the same. Only – and she wouldn't have believed it possible, back then – this time was worse. This time, it was not just thoughts of Harry and love of Harry that flashed through her mind, but also memories of them together. She saw him laugh, felt him whisper her name against her skin, remembered how he felt inside of her, holding her against him, how well they fit when they embraced. She could almost taste his mouth, smell the scent of his skin, as it was in the morning – day's old soap and sweat, and sex, and Harry.

Knowing him had made it infinitely more painful to have lost him, but the joy surged through her, when Erin called out that he was okay, was infinitely better as well. Upon hearing her Section Chief's words, Ruth had exhaled heavily into her hands, leaning slightly into Tariq's hand as he placed it against her shoulder – her younger colleague's own face split with a wide grin. She had laughed while tears of relief slipped down her face. For the first time, she had not had to temper her reaction. She was allowed to be happy. She and Harry were something real. The team knew. Everyone was okay. And that was all that mattered.

"...I honestly thought my heart was going to stop," she murmured, tightening her fingers against the fabric of his thin hospital shirt. She had never been one for sharing her innermost thoughts but tonight it somehow felt right. "All I could think," she told him, swallowing back the coward's urge to shy away, "was how empty I would be, without you, how much I would miss you. And then when Erin checked in, to say that you were okay..." she exhaled heavily.

Lifting her eyes to Harry's, she gripped her fingers tightly into his coat and forced herself to continue speaking. When she thought he was dead, she had wished so desperately that she had the chance to say this. Now she had the chance. She shouldn't waste it.

"I just want you to know," she told him, breathlessly, a little bashfully. "...you are _everything_, to me."

A moment passed.

Harry looked incredibly touched, then his cheeks blushed slightly pink and he cleared his throat.

"I think," he said, quietly, "that might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."

Ruth looked away, cheeks blushing even pinker.

"You can't have many people who really know you, then."

Another moment passed then Harry's fingers found her chin, turning her attention back to him.

She reticently lifted her eyes to meet his.

"Thank you," he murmured.

Tears pricked, but Ruth refused to let them fall. She had more important things to attend to.

Clearing the tightness from her throat, she leant forwards again. Standing up on her toes, she kissed Harry firmly on the lips – a kiss of gentle rediscovery, after the drama of their being parted. A kiss that was all the sweeter for the absence and the danger; all the warmer for the cold in the air around them. Pulled close, they fit so well. They were made for this, Ruth thought, momentarily closing her eyes. Human beings were made to fit together, to bond themselves into a group and unreservedly, to create life rather than destroy it. They were not meant for hurt and pain and killing. Or to be alone.

"We should get you inside, into the warmth," Harry told her, as they parted, his warm fingers brushing against her cold neck.

"Just a minute longer," she asked her Harry, pressing her forehead against his cheek.

It was a wantonly intimate act, but there was nobody up here to see them and they had almost been torn apart for good. Next time, she told herself, she would take the matter in a more reasonable manner. She would be composed and controlled and greet him like the employee she had to be, on the Grid. That was, if there had to be a next time, before she was no longer his employee – and the time when she would not be his employee was not so very far away.

Standing up on that roof, in the dark, Ruth had finally made the decision she had spent the last two weeks deliberating over. She had decided to take the Home Secretary's offer. She had decided leave Thames House. It was time, she reasoned. She had given all she had and that was all any of them could do, in their line of work. She had done good, while she was here. She had served her country. Now, it was time to admit that that part of her life was over. Now, it was time for her to apply her skills in a different way and to finally be able to make the division between work and home life. She knew that both herself and Harry both needed stability and she could give that to them. She could remove at least one of the complications to their relationship.

She was going to take the job. And that meant, she had to tell him.

"I have something else to tell you," she said, steadying her heartbeat with a long, slow breath.

Harry looked down, fingers stroking her back.

"What is it?"

"It's something I should have told you a while ago," she admitted, a little nervously.

"What?"

Ruth took a deep breath.

"The Home Secretary offered me a job."

Harry drew back to meet her eyes, his expression suddenly slightly confused, slightly unreadable.

"When?" he asked, brow creasing his forehead.

"Nearly two weeks ago," Ruth admitted, breathing in and hoping this was not too much, after everything that had happened tonight. "I know should have told you sooner, but I didn't want to say anything to anyone until I knew what I wanted to do."

Harry stared.

"Until you knew what you wanted to do?" he repeated, still frowning.

"Yes," Ruth nodded. "I wanted to know I was sure about my decision before telling anyone."

A few long seconds passed.

Harry blinked. "I suppose this means you know, now?"

Ruth nodded again, wondering what was going on behind his endless gaze.

"I almost lost you, today," she explained, with as much courage as she could muster, "but I coped with it. I kept working."

Her lover frowned.

"But, surely that's a good thing?"

She smiled, slightly, having known this would be a sticking point to such a pragmatic mind as Harry's. "I think its a sign that I've taken all that I can learn, from this job," she explained her feelings, as best she was able. "I think it's the incentive I need to move on."

Harry's expression shifted slightly, becoming instantly worried.

"Move on?"

"In a career sense only," Ruth assured him, sliding her hands down to rest on his hips, thumbs pressed into the soft flesh there. "I have had a lot of change, in my life, over the last few weeks," she explained and Harry nodded, silently, in agreement. He had too. "And that was what held me back from accepting, right away. I didn't want everything to change, all at once. But," she smiled at Harry, as he looked nervous again, "I've realised that, sometimes, you have to throw yourself in at the deep end. I need to be all-in if I want to make 'us' work."

"You don't have to leave the Service because we're together," Harry assured her, with the deepest sort of sincerity in his eyes. "I can handle any difficulties our employer-employee relationship throws up."

"As can I," Ruth agreed, "but that, it itself, is another reason to go."

Harry frowned.

"...I don't understand."

Lowering her hands from his sides, Ruth let them fall to hers, remembering the last time they had stood up here, on this rooftop. He had given her an ultimatum, love or nothing, and she had chosen love. She had chosen him, despite the risk it had been, and look how far it had taken them. Watching his eyes, she tried to explain the motives for her decision as clearly as she could. This was not about him. This was about her. And a life choice.

"I was scared to leave, before," she told him, "because, before, leaving felt like running away – as if I couldn't cope with having you as both my boss and my lover. Now," she gave a little smile, "I know I'm not running. So, I don't have to feel guilty about actually wanting this job."

Harry frowned.

"You _want_ to leave?"

Ruth gave a little smile at the confusion in his eyes.

"I do, but not because I'm unhappy. I love my job, but I don't want to do it forever. This is an amazing opportunity," she told him, reaching forwards to brush her hand across his forearm, feeling it hard through the thick fabric of his coat. "Towers wants me to work as a Security Liaison," she explained. "I'd still get to be in the same area, just without as much risk. I'd be liaising between the Home Office, Five, Six and Special Branch, so I'd still get to work with the team and with you."

"And you really want to leave?"

"I came to Thames House because I wanted a new challenge. Its the same reason I have for leaving."

Short and concise was the only answer she could manage. She wanted to throw herself at him and assure him that this was not personal, that she did not want to leave _him_. She wanted to draw him to her and kiss him again and again because they were so very good at the physical and it would be such an easy distraction, from the emotionally-charged conversation they had to have. She didn't, however. They needed to talk.

Inches away, Harry remained quiet, for a few seconds. He looked sad, pensive, but it was not an expression that Ruth associated with anger or distress.

"Harry?" she eventually asked, after a good thirty seconds had passed and her nerves had grown too much. "... Will you say something please?"

"Are you _sure_?" was all he had to reply.

Ruth bit her lip, wishing she could press it against his, knowing she couldn't. They needed to talk.

"I almost positive," she told him, then firmly pressed herself to elaborate. "I've written an acceptance letter to the Home Secretary saying I'd like to stay to finish up all of the current cases I'm involved with. I've not posted it yet because I wanted to tell you, first."

Her companion was silent for another few long seconds.

"Harry, this is what I always wanted to do," Ruth stressed, tilting her head to catch his eyes – brown rather than hazel in the darkness. "My work for MI5 was always meant to be temporary."

"I know. And I know you said that this wasn't what this was about," he continued, raising one hand to rub across his temple, "but... are you _sure_ you're not swayed, in your decision, because of us?"

Ruth sighed.

There was no point in lying. It was a little bit about them. It was always going to be a little bit about them.

"Well, if I stay my career is effectively dead-ended," she admitted. "It's hardly as if you can promote me, after all."

"I could."

"Not without causing a scandal," Ruth countered, gently. "And I can handle that," she added, speaking over Harry's small attempt to butt-in. "Believe me, Harry, if it was a choice between being with you and having a glowing career then I would clean the streets or work in a shop for the rest of my life."

He looked a little love-struck at that, but Ruth forced herself to push past it – and the need to touch him – and continued.

"But I don't have to make that choice," she explained, softly. "I have an opportunity to make our situation that little bit easier and do something that interests me. The compromise is change but change, I've recently found, is not always a bad thing."

"I know," he shook the adoration from his eyes and forced his face into a frown again. "It doesn't seem fair that you are the only one who has to compromise, though."

A tiny smile pulled at Ruth's lips.

"Believe me, there will be times in our future when you'll have to compromise, too." She lifted one hand again, brushing a snowflake which had fallen into his hair. "And, believe me, this is a good compromise. It is a good opportunity for me and it gives us more room to breathe."

"You do know," Harry shuffled his feet a little, "I-," he paused, cleared his throat slightly. Ruth smothered a smile. He was so beautifully eloquent in a briefing room. Not in a million years would her colleagues equate their boss with the vulnerable man standing before her, now. This Harry was different. Softer and harder, all at the same time. And hers. "I would be happy not to 'breathe' for the rest of my life, if it means you would be happy," he continued, his words finally picking up momentum. "Honestly, Ruth, I only ever wanted to fit in with your life as it was. I never meant to change anything, especially not you. I just want to make things... right."

"I know," she leant in and kissed his cheek one final time before stepping away from his body, the cold sweeping around her. "It's part of why I love you," she told him, a little shyly. "But I want this."

They looked at each other.

A long moment passed.

"It is a good job," her lover finally conceded, his voice quiet.

"It is," she agreed.

"And you are absolutely sure it's what you want?"

His eyes were deep and incredibly intense and focussed solely on her.

Ruth nodded.

"It took a while to get my head around it all, but I think it'll make me happy."

"Well," her boss sighed, heavily, and gave himself a nod, "if you'll be happy, then I suppose I have to agree."

She beamed.

"I can't attest to how grumpy I'll be to the rest of the team after you're gone, however," he warned, with a half-smile. "I have no idea what we'll do without you."

"You'll find another analyst. She or he will be just as highly trained. And probably you can pay them less."

"They won't be brilliant." Harry pointed out.

"They will _get_ brilliant. Quickly. You learn or you burn out, in this job."

Harry smiled.

"They won't be you."

"Well," Ruth cleared her throat, embarrassed but feeling inwardly delighted to be on the receiving end of his praise. "It'll be a few months before I go," she blustered. "So you'll have to put up with me until then. I told Towers I couldn't leave until I had worked all my current cases through to close," she explained. "I wanted some time to transition and he didn't mind, so long as he knew whether or not I wanted the job by the end of this month."

"You take as long as you want," Harry told her, just the hint of a possessive growl in his voice, "Towers can bloody wait. He's got enough staff to form his own private army."

Hiding a smile, she reached out and took his hand.

He squeezed her fingers.

They stood for a while, like that, just feeling each other. Ruth felt as if an enormous weight had been taken off of her shoulders. She had told Harry about the job and he had not completely lost it. She could tell he was miffed that he had not known earlier. She could also tell that he absolutely did not want her to go but at least, she thought, he was considering the situation with an open mind. He could see, as well as she could, that this was an amazing opportunity for her. Technical officers never got promoted, within the Service, to the same degree as Field officers. And her involvement with Harry had made any promotion of hers unlikely, even if they hadn't been sleeping together. They had history.

Running her fingers over the soft pads of her lover's, Ruth wondered how long it would take him to come around to the idea. She had made it very clear to Towers that it might be as much as three months before she could start at the Home Office. She was still involved in two investigative task forces and Calum's Bradford operation, at the moment – and God knew when that was going to be wrapped up. She and Harry would have time to acclimatise to the idea of the change, she assured herself. And as for the rest of the team... Ruth bit at her lip. Well, Calum already knew, so she supposed she should tell them right away. No point in holding back. From past experience, she knew that just made it more difficult.

Turning her face up to Harry's, she gave him a small smile.

He returned it and was quiet for another few seconds, before asking, in a slightly timid voice.

"Ruth, why didn't you tell me?"

Ruth gave a huge sigh.

Ah... that. She had forgotten they still needed to have that aspect of the conversation.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I mean, I do know, but it was silly." She gave Harry an apologetic look. "I suppose I just wanted to know what I wanted to do, before we spoke. I thought it would make this all go a lot smoother."

Harry gave her a strange look and there was a moment where Ruth felt the thirteen years that stood between them just a little more acutely than usual. Thirteen years, she thought, watching his golden brown eyes steadily. It rarely mattered, at their point in life, but just occasionally it did. Thirteen years more experience on this planet, countless more experience in relationships.

"We don't always get to know, beforehand, Ruth," he told her, slowly. "That's not how these things work."

"I know," she responded, just a tiny bit indignantly. "I'm not naive."

A muscle twitched in his cheek, the tiniest hint of a smile.

Ruth felt her cheeks heat again, despite the cold.

"I'm not," she insisted.

"No, you're not," he agreed, watching her fondly. "But you are so worried about making 'us' perfect that you miss out on some of the advantages that we could provide, for each other. Its sort of the point of a relationship, you know," he stated, "having someone to talk this sort of thing through with."

"I know," she watched him, wondering what she had possibly done, in this life, to deserve someone who understood her so well. "I just wasn't sure how you'd take it," she explained, with a wince, at her own words.

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"As your partner or as your boss?"

"As both."

He squeezed her hand again.

"Well, for future reference, don't worry about how I'll react. Just..."

Ruth frowned.

"Just what?"

Harry sighed.

"Just tell me, next time," he asked, softly – only slightly reproachful. "I'm in this for everything - not just the easy bits. Okay?"

Ruth leant closer, nudging her arm into his slightly.

"Okay."

"Okay," he nodded.

She offered him another smile, getting the feeling that their conversation was not quite over but happy to have the rest of it another time, if he was. In bed, perhaps, during that fantasy snow-in that she was hoping for, folded around each other for warmth. That would be nice.

"Shall we head back in?" she asked him.

Harry nodded. "Let's wrap this chaos up, for the day, and go home. We'll start again tomorrow."

Ruth smiled.

"Sounds good to me."

.

They turned to the stairway, intending to head down the stairs but before they reached it Calum Reid appeared within its frame, out of breath from taking the stairs at a run. With a grin as wide as the river below, he told them that he and his asset were finally undercover within the White Extremist group's inner circle and that Jordan Milligan had tasked him with recruiting, on one of the city's most disgruntled estates. This, he told them, was the moment they had been waiting for. Give him three more officers, he said, and they could break this organisation wide open and leave it for the crows. This was exactly what they had been hoping for.

Standing by Ruth's side, Harry listened to the younger officer reporting with an air of quiet pride, then he nodded and told his officer that he'd come down and hear the briefing that Calum had for him, as to possibilities for expanding their operation within the Bradford group.

The three officers turned and headed indoors, Calum continuing to explain the situation as he went. As the words 'bomb components' and 'Northern Ireland' became involved, and any possibility of them heading straight home and having an early night began to vanish, Ruth slipped her hand inside Harry's and gave him a gentle squeeze. He glanced over and reciprocated, with a knowing smile. This was the job. This was what they did. This was what had made them, both individually and together.

Following their colleague deeper into the labyrinthine corridors of MI5 headquarters, they let go of each other's hands but stood a little closer than they used to.

If Calum noticed, he cleverly refrained from saying a word.

.

_TBC..._

_A/N - Hello and thanks for reading. Just a note to say that I will be taking a few weeks off from writing this fic, due to an intense working schedule, but should be back with more on 'Catalysis' next month. Also,__ a huge 'thanks' to all who have reviewed thus far; I am very grateful for all suggestions and comments and It's nice to know that people are still interested in where I'm taking this. There will still be a good bit of plot, in the chapters to come, but the story will be more focussed around the character's personal stuff for a while (Ruth's job move, a house move, Zoe re-joining the team and a little bit of family drama for Harry). Hope you continue to read and enjoy. =)_

_-Silver._


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